Hungary's Tomato Club organises biking tours for the blind
By Gabor Heves
Most blind people are physically healthy, yet sightlessness prevents the majority from gaining the maximum health benefits of physical movement. The disability is not entirely to blame: the blind remain only weakly integrated into society, and especially in Central and Eastern Europe. Recognising this situation, a Hungarian NGO called Tomato Club is organising biking tours for the blind.
It is often difficult to get blind people out of their homes and "make them move". Apart from slow-speed walking, most blind people do little physical exercise. Lack of vision makes most sports unsuitable for them, but not all! Even blind people are sometimes reluctant to acknowledge this until they have some positive experience to convince them otherwise.
One must also recognise that, in spite of recent improvements in accessibility, conditions for integrating people who are blind or have only limited vision remain far from ideal. Careful consideration of their specific needs is rather the exception than the rule. Historically, people with disabilities living in Central and Eastern Europe have usually kept in isolation from mainstream society. Tomato Club understands this problem, and is making an effort to change the situation.
Tomato Club began offering recreational programmes for the blind and sight-challenged in 1999. It evolved out of a group of friends that had been hiking together for a number of years. The club's activities are open to everyone, however - with or without disabilities. The aim of the association is primarily twofold; not just to improve the quality of life for blind persons, but also to reduce prejudices and fears by offering an opportunity to mix socially.
The biking tours employ tandem bicycles, of which Tomato Club currently has up to a dozen. As tandem bicycles are difficult to obtain in shops and very expensive (well over EUR 2,000), they were made locally - most of them by club members themselves. Do-it-yourself bike construction not only means significant savings (one must also consider higher costs of transport and spare-parts) it also allows customising the vehicles to accommodate people of different size.
Each tour involves about 10-20 participants, half of which are blind. There are tours every two weeks during the six-month biking season. Most of those taking part are returning participants.
In 2008 a tandem tour was organised alongside the Vienna-Budapest Marathon. As runners are often accompanied by bikers along marathon routes, this event featured 10 teams of tandem riders - 10 with vision, 10 blind.
Most of the club's costs are covered through project grants, though participants do pay a nominal fee for participation.
In its decade of activity, Tomato Club has offered programmes to hundreds of blind and sighted individuals, while also building good cooperation with other organisations, such as the Society of Blinds and People with Deteriorated Vision, the "See!" society, and National Association of the Physically Disabled. The club also enjoys very good cooperation with foreign partners, especially in Slovakia.
Indeed, Hungary's Tomato Club is proving beneficial both to those with disabilities and to society at large. Based on the success of the tandem tours alone, the club now offers a range of other activities, such as sailing, horseback riding, hiking and musical events. In the winter season they organise museum visits, which are not as easy as one might think, as most museum curators aren't too keen on visitors touching the objects on exhibit.
For more information on the Tomato Club, contact Miklos Arpasy at tandem@paradicsomklub.hu or write to http://www.paradicsomklub.hu/.
