Fundraiser looks to help visually impaired

It’s getting to be spooky season around Shreveport-Bossier City and the ArkLa-Tex, so we can probably expect some unusual happenings to crop up. One of those spooky events is the second annual Eye Ball. Yes, you read that right.

Bonne Summers is the event coordinator and designer. “This event was established last year as the major fundraiser for the North Louisiana Association for the Blind. They thought that a local, adult, Halloween party would be a great thing.”

North Louisiana Association for the Blind President and CEO Brian Patchett said that while the event is designed to be spooktacular, its goal is serious. “The purpose is to raise money for our new assistive technology training center.”

They’ve taken a former warehouse and are turning it into a new rehabilitation center for people who are visually impaired.

The Eye Ball will be held Oct. 25 from 7 to 11 p.m. at the Live! Casino & Hotel ballroom. Tickets are available now through the Louisiana Association for the Blind website, Eventbrite, Facebook and Red River Radio,

There will be plenty to see and do this year, according to Summers, including dueling DJs, and food and drink. There will also be a caricature artist on hand to capture your special look for the evening.

“Come dance, eat, drink. I think it’s some of the best costume prizes around, too,” Summer said. “It’s up to $4,000 in costume prizes. We’re encouraging people to dress up. Last year, the winning couple came as the King and Eye. The gentleman dressed up as a king and his wife dressed up as a giant eyeball. It was fabulous.”

The categories for the costume contest are Best Male, Best Female, Best Couple and Best Krewe. The prize in each is $1,000.

“This year, we’ve got caricature artists, a 360-degree camera, a brave box — you get to stick your hand inside and feel what’s in there. It’s kind of fun and creepy. We’re going to have palm readers, too, fortune tellers. All that’s free; it’s part of the ticket price. It’s $55 per person. It does not include the bar, though.”

There’s also the Skeleton Key Coffin Raffle, which consists of a variety of prizes like Ray-Ban Meta glasses, spa gift cards, Robinson Film Center memberships, Mudbugs hockey items, tickets to places like Chasing Aces, SciPort Discovery Center and more.

The event, which is for folks 21 and up, provides the funds for the 2,100 to 2,500 clients who use the Association for the Blind’s services. “In Louisiana, we have some of the highest [numbers] of people who are blind or visually impaired in the country,” Patchett said. “We have a lot of diabetes, for example, so there’s a lot of retina and blindness issues that come as a result of that.”

The high rate in Louisiana may come from what makes this part of the south unique, Patchett said. “It appears to be that not all the food that we love here in Louisiana is great for people who might be on the edge of getting diabetes, right? Think about all the sugar that we eat, all the sweet tea, all that. There also seems to be, across the South, more diabetes.

“If you think about it, if you were to lose your sight, how would that change your job? Everything you do you can still do; you just have to use different applications and technology. That’s what we help people do. To help them to continue to be independent, to continue to do their jobs, to continue to be independent in their homes or be successful in school. That is how important that is.”