ALBINISM Action for inclusion
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inasra is a Namibian nonprofit organisation passionately committed to empowering people living with albinism. According to Toon Sanders, volunteer and passionate driver of Sinasra, this is much needed in a country with the highest ratio of people living with albinism in the world. Incredible collaborative efforts have seen great work done to assist people living with albinism here in Namibia. The work not only assists Namibians in practical ways, but has also resulted in lower levels of discrimination in Namibia than in many other African countries, and ensured Namibian representation at gatherings dedicated to best practices – for example, for Amnesty International.
“We visit albino children in the North to help them in practical ways. We take sunscreen and hats. We take them to optometrists to check their eyes because for albino children, the degeneration of the eyes is sometimes terrible. In Tsumeb we had a girl who had minus seventeen eyesight and she’s eleven years old, so you can imagine that she didn’t see anything. How is it possible for a girl like that to learn? Now she has glasses that were made in South Africa because they couldn’t make them in Namibia, and this is all done for free.” Toon explains: “All albino children can go to the optometrists who are part of the Namibian Optometrist Association (NOA), and have their eyes checked and get glasses for free. Sinasra has made an arrangement with this organisation, and we now have about forty optometrists throughout the country. This is just one of the many projects Sinasra is involved in. The most recent of their projects was a collaborative effort to raise awareness for the plight of those living with albinism. Passionate people young and old came together to create ‘A song of hope’. Toon explains that one of the collaborators on the project was Michelle McLean-Bailey. She not only offered her voice to introduce the song – “She said, ‘That’s great, I’d like to do it’” – she also facilitated the involvement of the choir from Michelle McLean Primary School. “So that’s what we did, together with some of the visually impaired children from the school in Windhoek. There were some very nice children, who love to sing,” Toon explains, adding that Dolar Yves, the Namibia-based Congolese singer, assisted the team with the lyrics. The melody was composed by Sesamstraat (Sesame Street) in Holland as Toon knows someone who writes for the popular
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