Matthew Layton presents Studio 1 - Vision Australia Radio’s weekly look at life from a low vision and blind point of view.

On this week’s show…

An inspiring story of human resilience. 

Matthew’s guest Marie Younan was born into a family of Assyrian refugees in north-eastern Syria.

As a baby she was accidentally blinded by her grandmother - at a time and in a place where children with disabilities were not encouraged to thrive in the way we have come to expect in our society today.

Her family migrated to Beirut, and then, in the mid-seventies, to Melbourne to escape the Lebanese civil war. 

Because she was blind, Marie was denied a visa, and was forced to wait in Syria and Athens for three years before the family could sponsor her to come to Australia. 

Unable to speak English, dependent for everything on her family, Marie, in her words, was 'only half alive'. 

Then, in 1985, aged 33, she attended the Royal Victorian Institute for the Blind. There she became fluent in English, literate in braille, and physically mobile with the help of a cane. 

She now lives in Melbourne working as an interpreter, helping refugees and their support workers to communicate with each other and she’s just about to release a book about her life.

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[PHOTO CAPTION: Black and white photo of author Marie Younan sitting at a desk with a gentleman, both of them poring over a hefty-looking braille text.]

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RESOURCES

“A Different Kind of Seeing” written by Marie Younan, published by Scribe Publications - https://scribepublications.com.au/books-authors/books/a-different-kind-of-seeing

Tammey Candeloro - Counselling 4 You WA https://www.counselling4youwa.com.au/ - 0423 93 15 74

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Vision Australia gratefully acknowledges the support of the Community Broadcasting Foundation for Studio 1.

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