Alaska Center for the Blind and Visually Impaired

07/29/2026

07/25/2026

https://conta.cc/44OhoyB

Email from Alaska Center for the Blind and Visually Impaired 'Mask"-querade   Seeing With Our Hearts 2026 “Mask”- querade” Supporting the Alaska Center for the Blind and Visually Impaired Thursday, Oc

07/23/2026

If you knew Julia, you knew her joy.

Julia Thérèse Gebert had a way of filling a room with music, laughter, kindness, curiosity, and love. Though she was born blind, she taught so many of us how to see what matters most. She delighted in friendship, music, adventure, and the simple gift of being together with the people she loved.
While we miss her beyond words, we are profoundly grateful for the twenty-six beautiful years we were blessed to share her life, her light, and her love.
We invite those who knew and loved Julia to join us as we celebrate her life.

Funeral Mass
Saturday, August 1, 2026
11:00 a.m.
Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton Parish 2901 E. Huffman Road
Anchorage, Alaska

A Celebration of Life reception will immediately follow.

In keeping with Julia’s lifelong love of learning, independence, and accessibility, the Alaska Center for the Blind and Visually Impaired has established the Julia Gebert Technology Fund. The fund will provide assistive technology and technology scholarships to individuals throughout Alaska who are blind or visually impaired so that Julia’s legacy of inclusion, opportunity, and joy may continue to bless others.

Those wishing to honor Julia’s memory may learn more or make a gift here:

https://www.alaskabvi.org/julia-gebert-memorial-fund/

If Julia touched your life, we would love for you to share a favorite memory or photograph in the comments. Nothing would make us happier than filling this space with the stories, laughter, and love that she leaves behind.

Joy Awaits Us.

07/23/2026

September 2nd
Book Club
12:00 – 1:00PM at the Alaska Center for the Blind and Visually Impaired
We will be discussing the book, ”The Dark Days of Hamburger Halpin” by Josh Berk.
For Information call Pete McCall at 907-771-4306.

07/22/2026

We joined the 2026 Hope and Sunrise Wagon Trail Run on Sunday, July 19. The 5K run and walk started in front of the Hope Social Hall in downtown Hope, Alaska, and wound through the trails and woods that surround the town.
The event is the primary fundraiser for the volunteer Hope-Sunrise Emergency Services and a handful of local nonprofits. Every registration fee and sponsorship dollar goes back into keeping the community running.
The photos show three vintage cars with Executive Director, Nate Kile, and long-time ACBVI supporter Pamela Gebert in front of the cars in their racing bibs after finishing the race. The cars are a 1932 Ford model A, a 1959 Rolls-Royce, and a 1941 Cadillac.
Two facts about Hope you may not know:
1. The town is named after Percy Lee Hope, a 17-year-old prospector who was the youngest man off the boat when 3,000 gold seekers landed on Cook Inlet in the spring of 1896.
2. At the peak of the boom, Hope had two saloons, a brewery, a hotel, a pool hall, and an assay office. Today its population sits under 200.
Thank you to the Hope-Sunrise volunteers who kept us safe on the course. See you next year.

07/20/2026

Deep thanks to the View Lions Club District 49-A, for stepping up to sponsor our Anchorage low vision clinics. Their support will fund device scholarships for clients in the Anchorage area, putting adaptive tools directly into the hands of Alaskans who need them.
The Mt. View Lions have been serving Anchorage for over 65 years. Chartered in October 1958, sponsored into existence by the Spenard Lions Club, they started with community service projects and carnival fundraisers at the corner of Bragaw and Mt. View Drive. In 1967 they secured an 11-acre lease from Elmendorf Air Force Base and built what generations of Anchorage kids now know as Mountain View Lions Park. The rocket slide, the pavilions, the tennis and basketball courts, the ball fields, the picnic areas. Volunteer hands, community dollars.
Lions Clubs International has been the world's largest champion for vision service since 1925, when Helen Keller called Lions to be "Knights of the Blind in the crusade against darkness." That call still guides the work.

Interested in becoming a Lion? The Mountain View Lions Club welcomes new members.
Email: [email protected]
Phone: 907-277-9209
https://www.mtviewlions.org/
Motto: We Serve.

07/17/2026

The first silent auction donation for Seeing With Our Hearts 2026 has arrived, and it is a beautiful piece of local Alaskan art.
The piece is a wood engraving of the Chugach skyline as seen from Anchorage. A single continuous line rises and falls across the wood, tracing seven landmarks left to right: Wolverine Peak, Rusty Point, Mount Williwaw, O'Malley Peak, The Wedge, Flattop, and Flaketop Peak. The gray grain reads like weathered Alaska stone.
More donations are on the way. Seeing With Our Hearts is October 8 at the Anchorage Museum, and this year's theme is "Mask"querade. Tickets go on sale soon.

07/16/2026

Imagine your cousin flies up from the Lower 48 in late July and asks what crazy Alaska experience you have lined up. You hand her a snorkel and a wetsuit. By the afternoon the two of you are floating over Mountain Point off Ketchikan, with starfish and pink salmon below.
That trip came to the live auction at Seeing With Our Hearts (SWOH) 2025 from Alaska. The winning bidder is enjoying it this summer with their visitor, after deciding back in October to lock the trip in before summer scheduling pressure hits.
Your contribution at SWOH funds the work at Alaska Center for the Blind and Visually Impaired (ACBVI). It pays for training, assistive technology, mobility instruction, low vision care, and the steady work of helping blind and visually impaired Alaskans build the life they want. The summer adventures from the auction are the bonus on top.
SWOH 2026 lands this fall. Watch the page over the coming weeks for more of last year's auction lineup.

07/15/2026

Our client Braden, with the guidance of instructor Kevin Whitley, made a beautiful wood cutting board in manual skills class. His visual impairment has not held him back from creating this beautiful piece.

07/15/2026

Last Friday, we gathered for another wonderful Art Club & Movie afternoon at the Center!
Participants explored their creativity through finger painting, creating colorful summer landscapes and enjoying an afternoon of art, conversation, and fun together.
To celebrate National Kitten Day, we enjoyed snacks and watched the documentary Inside the Mind of a Cat with Audio Description. The film gave us a fascinating look into how cats think, communicate, play, and interact with people, making it a perfect way to recognize the day while learning more about our feline friends.
Thank you to everyone who joined us and helped make the afternoon so much fun. We love seeing our community come together to create, connect, and enjoy accessible entertainment.
We're sharing a few photos from the event—thank you for being part of another memorable Friday with us!