The world is in touch

Snezhana Cherepanova is 11 years old, and she does not see from birth. She got into the orphanage when she was 5 years old, after her mother died with a train crash. Father threw the family immediately after the birth of the blind daughter. Snezhana lives in the Sergius-Posad orphanage of deaf-blind children: there are almost two hundred people like her, or similar children. In the world, according to the World Health Organization, about 1.4 million blind children. The orphanage in Sergiev Posad is one of two similar educational institutions in Russia: here children are taught to live by touch - to read fingers, play music without notes, by ear, to recognize the world around by smells and voices. Snezhana was lucky: she just does not see, but children live in an orphanage who still do not hear. In the 1970s, the four deaf-blind pupils of this orphanage took part in the famous experiment of psychology professor Alexander Ivanovich Meshcheryakov: they taught the blind and inaudible children under the program of the general school, and then they acted and quite successfully graduated from the Faculty of Psychology of Moscow State University named after Lomonosov. Professor Meshcheryakov dreamed of creating a society of deaf -blind people who later could help those who are deprived of vision and hearing. Partly his dream came true: pupils of the Sergiev Posad orphanage who receive a higher education, return here-to help deaf -ishaled children. However, what people are experiencing for whom the world is dark and it, sighted and hearing, is not given to understand - but we can let them feel that the world around is located to them.

Snezhana Cherepanova (

left ) with a girlfriend learn singing ...

... and reading Brill's font

Snezhana is a lot of music

Snezhana’s life is far from sugar - it is an orphan

Canteen of the Sergiev Posad orphanage

Photo: Diana Markosyan