Partially blind Cape boy wins international award
A partially blind Cape Town boy will soon be jetting off to New York after winning an international writing competition.
|||Cape Town - A 12-year-old partially blind boy who lives in a backyard will soon be jetting off to New York after winning an international writing competition.
Joel Greek, a Grade 7 pupil at the Athlone School for the Blind, in Bellville, also won $5 000 (R77 921) after entering the International Lions Essay Contest.
Joel’s win will be announced at the award and prize-giving ceremony in New York on March 12, where he is expected to address a crowd of over 500 people as well as delegates from the UN.
Joel was diagnosed with optic glaucoma at the age of six months. He was born able to see, but his vision has since deteriorated. He now has partial vision in one eye and is blind in the other. He lives with his single mother in a backyard in Kuils River.
From early childhood, Joel attended mainstream schools, but later moved to the Athlone School for the Blind after a doctor’s recommendation.
Joel entered the writing competition, with the theme Share Peace, in September. Inga Greek, his mother, said when Joel came home and told her about the competition she was a bit reluctant.
But despite his demanding hospital visits, Joel managed to enter a winning piece.
His essay spoke of how people, despite the challenges they faced, could become successes or make an impact.
He wrote about Anne Frank who had to go into hiding during World War II to avoid the Nazis, American Laura Bridgeman, who became the first deaf and blind person to learn a language (50 years before Helen Keller) and South Africa’s famous child Aids activist, Nkosi Johnson.
He wrote: “I myself am a young boy with a disability, the only one in my family. Yet they accept me knowing I am capable of anything. We have an opportunity to change the world. By accepting our ownselves, our differences, our imperfections, our shortcomings, we will be able to accept others, their differences, their imperfections and their shortcomings.”
Jimmy Lang, the president of the Gordon’s Bay Lions Club, who handpicked Joel’s entry as a submission for his district, said he knew the essay stood a chance to win.
Lang received three essays from the school, but could only enter one from his district.
“When I received it, I was impressed with it. I thought it was good. He spoke about his peers, about himself being disadvantaged and how it (disabilities) should not discourage people.
“You could tell he read a lot.”
Greek said: “I am so proud of my son. The amount of research and passion he put into writing that essay was amazing.
“This is one of the things that will be a stepping stone for him to explore the world and be the voice of many of his peers.”
zodidi.dano@inl.co.za
Cape Argus