After hearing at a conference in India that two percent of the country’s population is blind, Sanjeev Thacker couldn’t shake this people group from his mind. He had just started a YWAM centre in Chhattisgarh and had never worked with people with a disability when a local pastor asked him to help at the conference and revealed that life-changing fact.

Thacker and his team prayed. They learned there were not many Christians working to help the blind and they felt God challenging them to take on that task. The Bible occasionally uses the metaphor of our spiritual eyes being opened to show how truth can be revealed; the team in Chhattisgarh knew they were not called to open the physical eyes of the blind, but were called to share spiritual truths: their vision for vision.

The first Discipleship Training School (DTS) for the blind began in January 2006 with 13 blind students and 3 seeing students. The staff members were not sure about ordinary DTS requirements such as work duties or outreach, and in the end, they never had to assign work duties, because the students jumped in to take care of their facilities and cook.

As the students traveled into two different locations for their evangelistic outreach, people were amazed by their examples. Thacker said the entire congregation at a church they visited was crying after the blind students shared their testimonies. Even though they were considered to be disadvantaged in the society, they still had a love and a hope that forced people to consider what made their lives worth living.

“When you say ‘God loves you,’ that really makes people think that if the blind can say that, then it must be something,” Thacker said.

And the blind have more authority to share the message of Jesus with others who are handicapped, because they are going through many of the same life circumstances, but with the key difference of their faith in Jesus.

One of the biggest challenges Thacker has battled in running the school is the finance aspect. Because none of the blind pay school fees, the team tries to fundraise enough to cover the fees. But, Thacker said, he has gone into debt several times trying to cover all the costs.

At first, the centre ran a program where the blind could get additional help after school (a service not offered at the school), and where they could sleep if they had no home. The money ran out, and Thacker ran into some of the students who used to stay with them sleeping in the railway station, because they had nowhere to go.

Since that first DTS, the centre in Chhattisgarh has seen two additional schools and currently has 47 trainees going through the program in Pune.