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An Untapped Market: How Ojok Simon is training the next generation of Ugandan beekeepers

An Untapped Market: How Ojok Simon is training the next generation of Ugandan beekeepers

Blind beekeeper Ojok Simon won the Holman Prize for Blind Ambition in 2017, becoming one of the Prize’s first three recipients. LightHouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired in San Francisco announced the 2018 Holman Prizewinners this month. Read our update on Ahmet Ustunel and stay posted for news on blind baker Penny Melville-Brown later this month.

Ojok Simon starts his day with honey. He wakes up at his home in Gulu, Uganda where he lives with his wife and five children, boils water, adds a squeeze of lemon and finishes it off with a spoonful of smoky, tangy honey produced by thousands of Africanized “killer” bees he tends at his non-profit bee farm, Hive Uganda.

He then leaves his house to head to the source of the honey. He walks 10 minutes along dirt roads flanked by tall grasses to the main roadside where he hops on a two-wheeler and travels along what he calls the “dancing roads” of the rural, agricultural district.

Ojok Simon addresses a classroom of Hive Uganda trainees.
Ojok Simon addresses a classroom of Hive Uganda trainees.

As an inaugural 2017 Holman Prizewinner, Ojok set out to train other blind people in rural Gulu how to keep bees as a means of livelihood — and he’s achieved just that. Since winning the prize last year, Ojok and his six fellow trainers have more than tripled their capacity, training 36 blind and low vision beekeepers within a 40-kilometer radius of the Hive Uganda homebase. As of August, he was slated to train 11 more before the end of his Holman Prize year.

Ojok established Hive Uganda in 2013. Partially blind since childhood, Ojok observed the disparaging mindsets around disability and rampant unemployment in the blindness community, and saw an opportunity to help his blind peers cultivate a better quality of life.

“The Holman Prize has helped us improve our infrastructure and expand our operations,” he says, noting the significant boost to capacity that the Prize allowed for. “We have strengthened our foundation base and opened the door for more connections and networking all over the world. Even after the money from the Holman Prize is spent, it will continue to give hope for other people to see and believe in what we’re doing.”

Ojok exudes warmth and optimism. His smile is boisterous and welcoming, lacking restraint. He possesses the kind of openness that often fades into adulthood, lessened by the strain of responsibility and hardship. In light of Ojok’s experience with violence at the hands of Ugandan rebels — his infectious joy seems even more remarkable.

In 1989, rebels from the Lord’s Resistance Army attacked Ojok’s home in the middle of the night. Nine years old at the time, Ojok stood up in bed — confused and half asleep. As the rebels searched for children, and boys in particular, they hit him multiple times in the side of the head with the blunt end of a gun to prevent him from fleeing. Due to a lack of proper medical attention, Ojok progressively lost sight in his left eye, with his right eye suffering damage as well.

“Growing up in an area with such conflict, you experience a lot of trauma,” he says. “It’s at the core of my people. So many people, like myself, have lost their vision because of war. After the incident, I thought there was no hope for my life. Life was painful. My dream had been to be a doctor and serve my peers. But after I lost my sight I thought I would not study or gain the skills I needed. Fortunately, or unfortunately, my uncle was beaten and also lost his sight. He gave me a way to follow — he was a role model for me.”

Legally blind by 1993, Simon learned braille in one year and joined a blind branch of high school in Gulu. With some basic rehabilitation, Ojok started to move forward and tackle his disability head on.

Fast forward to 2002 when Simon obtained a brailler and started school at Lakeside College in the capital city of Kampala. Here, Simon honed his skills on a typewriter, which made assimilating into this school much easier with his non-braille using cohorts. He graduated in 2007 with a bachelor’s degree in development studies and became the first visually impaired person in Gulu to finish this level of schooling.

And though Ojok was deliberate in his pursuit of education, his entrée into beekeeping was a chance encounter. One night, lost in the fields near his house, Ojok stumbled upon a clay pot, inhabited by a beehive. A barrage of bee stings sent him packing, but Ojok returned to harvest the honey. After bringing the honey back to his family and quietly pilfering another clay pot for more bees to colonize — he had the makings of a budding bee farm. Word quickly spread through his community that there was honey in production, and that the beekeeper was blind. They had to see, and taste, for themselves.

Ojok stands with a group of friends and fellow trainers, holding jars of Hive Uganda honey.
Ojok stands with a group of friends and fellow trainers, holding jars of Hive Uganda honey.

“Tasting that honey, I found myself with a lot of energy,” says Ojok. “When we started serving honey to the people who didn’t have it, they wanted to come and see for themselves. They could not imagine a blind person being able to provide honey to the family and the community. I started building new friendships and community ties.”

And this is the very crux of Ojok’s work through the Holman Prize. The outcomes are two-fold: Hive Uganda trains blind people a valuable life skill, and in doing so, positions them as experts and leaders in a nationally viable market that directly supports their communities.

As the main agricultural region of northern Uganda, approximately 90% of Gulu’s inhabitants work in an industry centered around cotton, tea, coffee, corn, sorghum and tobacco. But according to experts, there is a huge potential to expand beekeeping and honey production in the region. Uganda harvests only 1% of a potential 500,000 tons of honey per year. Despite being only one of five countries in sub-Saharan Africa licensed to export honey to the EU, Uganda has failed to meet home-grown demands for honey, let alone export to this potential market.

The training model is economically and environmentally sound — though challenges remain, including locating blind participants and continuing to secure sources of funding, like the Holman Prize.

A big part of Hive Uganda’s work involves direct outreach to nearby villages to identify blind participants, as well as securing venues for training groups in remote locations. Trainees are an even split of men and women, and range widely in age. Hive Uganda funds trainees’ daily commute and supports them in renting accommodations when necessary. Trainings are split into theoretical and practical training, with 10 days of classroom work and 10-12 days of fieldwork, where trainees start working directly with the hives. The trainings also builds in two to three days of foundational orientation and mobility — i.e. cane skills — which is part of their theoretical curriculum.

Ojok says his courses are standard beekeeping courses with slight adjustments in technique for blind beekeepers. Essentially, he says, blind beekeepers rely more on a sense of touch and smell to tell if a beehive is healthy. When the frame of a hive is heavy with honey and gives off the subtle aroma of sweet corn — it’s probably ready for harvesting. Other blind-friendly techniques include placing landmarks like wooden rails and fences to and from the hives.

When the trainees finish a course, the trainers furnish them with four “hollow-tree” hives and help with transport to their chosen local site. It’s during this trip that they involve the local community, including one-on-one trainings with family members and neighbors.

“Involving the community builds self-sustainability,” says Ojok. “Here we are trying to change the mindset of people towards blind people. Our students become very sensitive to community development. They will teach the community about safe water practices or provide health education to their community. They become community leaders.”

And it’s through these outcomes that Ojok realized, perhaps he had become a doctor after all, though in a slightly different sense than he had imagined.

“I don’t even regret that I became blind and didn’t become a doctor,” he says. “Because I’m serving the people, my people — the marginalized, the forgotten society.”

And through reframing his own differences as a strength, he’s realized that perhaps we’re best off when we stop valuing people for their similarities, and start accepting and loving our fellow humans for what makes them unique.

“Nobody will ever be the same as another person. We all have differences, it’s how we distinguish each other. But most importantly, we are all human beings, sharing the same oxygen. We all have a brain and we all need support from one another, whether you’re blind or you’re not blind. What is blindness and what is non-blindness? It’s all about perception.”

About the Holman Prize

In 2017, San Francisco LightHouse for the Blind launched the Holman Prize to support the emerging adventurousness and can-do spirit of blind and low vision people worldwide. This endeavor celebrates people who want to shape their own future instead of having it laid out for them. In early July, we announced the 2018 Holman Prizewinners — congratulations to Stacy CervenkaConchita Hernández and Red Szell. Ojok and his fellow 2017 prizewinners will visit San Francisco in November 2017 to speak at the LightHouse Gala.

“We are thrilled to be able to continue the Holman Prize for a second year,” says LightHouse CEO Bryan Bashin. “These three new prizewinners represent a wide range of ambitions and life experience: from tackling social obstacles to huge tests of physical and mental fortitude, they reflect the diversity and capability of blind people everywhere.”

Created specifically for legally blind individuals with a penchant for exploration of all types, the Holman Prize provides financial backing – up to $25,000 – for three individuals to explore the world and push their limits. Learn more at holmanprize.org.

A Blind Baker, Beekeeper and Kayaker Unite in San Francisco

A Blind Baker, Beekeeper and Kayaker Unite in San Francisco

Fourteen months ago, LightHouse CEO Bryan Bashin proposed a wild new idea: What if we create a prize to fund a blind person to do something ambitious? What if we fund their dreams ahead of time, to get them out in the world leading, creating, exploring and changing the face of blindness rather than simply rewarding them for past achievement?

Turns out dreaming big sometimes pays off, because in January this year we announced the very first Holman Prize for Blind Ambition, an annual set of awards – three in the first year – of up to $25,000 each financing and supporting blind people worldwide in pursuing an ambitious project of their design.

After a rigorous application process including a social media competition, multiple rounds of judging and a detailed project proposal, we found our inaugural Holman Prizewinners, an unlikely trio from vastly different walks of life. The three winners, kayaker Ahmet Ustunel, baker Penny Melville-Brown and beekeeper Ojok Simon each have one-of-a-kind projects that allow them to build and foster social impact in their immediate community.

Read what the San Francisco Chronicle has to say about the inaugural Holman Prizewinners.

This week, we hosted the prizewinners in San Francisco for a full week of trainings, meetings, skill-sharing and fun before they commence their projects starting October 1. It was a busy week, but was more than we could have ever hoped for.

We started out the week by heading to One Market Restaurant, where Penny baked with some of San Francisco’s top pastry chefs, exchanging tips and tricks, learning new methods, and even teaching them a few non-visual techniques. We want to extend a huge thank you to Michael Dellar for opening the restaurant to us and extending himself to give the blindness community such a warm welcome in the food and hospitality world. Watch this video of Penny and Mac folding a peach galette together.

Penny laughs in the One Market Restaurant kitchen with pastry chef Mac while plating a peach galette.
Penny laughs in the One Market Restaurant kitchen with pastry chef Mac while plating a peach galette.
Penny smiles with One Market pastry chefs Mac and Jan, who she just presented with the pewter medals she will give to all her baking partners along her journey.
Penny smiles with One Market pastry chefs Mac and Jan, who she just presented with the pewter medals she will give to all her baking partners along her journey.

Penny is finishing out her American adventure with three more major cooking stops: China Live in San Francisco, Cheeseboard in Berkeley, and Brown Sugar Kitchen in Oakland. She’s planning lots of updates and videos, which will be coming out weekly starting next week at Baking Blind.

Ahmet Ustunel, who actually lives in the same bustling SF downtown as LightHouse headquarters, was more of a tour guide than visitor this week. He took us to Lowell High School, where he teaches, and gave his fellow prizewinners a tour. Not only did Ahmet introduce us to some of his blind students, but also let Ojok climb up onto the roof of Lowell’s garden shed to investigate the beehive there!

Ojok and Lowell student Ellie show Ahmet the ropes as he feels a beehive box.
Ojok and Lowell student Ellie show Ahmet the ropes as he feels a beehive box.

We’ll be honest: For a minute there, we were a little worried Ojok almost wasn’t going to make here from Uganda due to a passport snafu, but with a lot of faith and a little luck, we welcomed him with open arms on Wednesday afternoon. He wasted no time – and within 12 hours he was running along Ocean beach and talking bees with fellow blind beekeeper Aerial Gilbert.

On Thursday the Holman crew headed over to the Arkansas Friendship Garden on Connecticut Street in the SF hills, where the journalist and author Meredith May keeps an active colony of bees regularly producing honey. Within minutes, Ojok had his hands in the hives – with no gloves, we might add – gently manipulating all the little worker bees without being stung once. At the end of the afternoon, everyone even got to dig their hands into some honeycomb and taste the sweet stuff right out of the hive.

Aerial Gilbert wears a protective hat and examines a wooden beehive frame.
Aerial Gilbert wears a protective hat and examines a wooden beehive frame.
Ojok holds up a beehive in a wooden frame for everyone to examine.
Ojok holds up a beehive in a wooden frame for everyone to examine.
Ojok smiles with his white bee hat and net catching the light, while bees fly around him.
Ojok smiles with his white bee hat and net catching the light, while bees fly around him.

Ojok then produced a small jar of honey that he had brought with him from Uganda, and the group got to taste the difference between the fruity, nectar-like honey of San Francisco’s Italian bees and the smoky, meaty honey made by Ojok’s Africanized “killer” bees. Ojok will return to Uganda next week and begin expanding the Hive Uganda program, which already has 38 blind and low vision sighted beekeepers, to teach honey farming to dozens more over the course of the next year.

On Friday, Ahmet took us out on the water – which, as he’s told us many times, is “his favorite place in the world.” The prizewinners and some documentary filmmakers hopped on a few sailboats with blind sailor Walt Raineri and the Bay Area Association of Disabled Sailors (BAADS), who took them all for a spin around McCovey Cove. Ahmet showed off some prototypes of the system he’ll use to autonomously navigate the Bosphorus Strait in Turkey next year, including directional and depth-sensing tools, all of which provide audible feedback. Learn more about his sonar technology from our livestream. As Ahmet’s project beings, you can follow him on Facebook and Instagram – and keep an eye out for him at your local waterway this fall while he trains for his big crossing, make sure to his page, he is the kind of guy that will buy instagram video views to motivate himself on social media!

Ahmet shows his sonar navigation system to a fellow blind sailor named Ben.
Ahmet shows his sonar navigation system to a fellow blind sailor named Ben.
Ahmet stands up in the boat while preparing to set out to McCovey Cove.
Ahmet stands up in the boat while preparing to set out to McCovey Cove.

If the live-streams, descriptions and photos weren’t enough, don’t worry: We had our cameras and microphones following along with the prizewinners all week long, and we’ll be soon bringing you scenes from the week.

Meet Ojok Simon: Blind Beekeeper and Holman Prizewinner

Meet Ojok Simon: Blind Beekeeper and Holman Prizewinner

‘Hive Uganda’ Founder plans to bring honey production and beekeeping training to blind and low vision communities of Uganda.

Imagine tending a beehive – or a whole farm of bees – with hundreds of thousands of buzzing, pollen-loving insects crawling all over you, stingers at the ready. Now imagine doing it blind. Unimaginable for most, this is just a normal day for Ojok Simon.

Today, Ojok became one of the three inaugural winners of the Holman Prize for Blind Ambition – an unprecedented $25,000 award for blind and low vision adventurers offered by the LightHouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired in San Francisco.

Ojok, who is in his mid-thirties, lost his vision more than 20 years ago when Ugandan rebels beat him severely and he incurred serious head injuries. Due to a lack of medical attention, his vision quickly deteriorated. Yet he didn’t stop pursuing his education, or later, his passion for beekeeping.

Ojok works outdoors on his bee farm

“I was walking in the bush close to our home, when I found a clay pot with bees and honey inside,” says Ojok. “That became a turning point for me.” Now with more than 100 colonized hives, Ojok has become somewhat of a celebrity in his community – even more so now that he can call himself one of the three first-ever recipients of The Holman Prize.

Intriguingly, centuries before Ojok began cultivating honey, the scientific understanding of beekeeping biology was first worked out by a blind scientist, François Huber, who met blind adventurer James Holman during his world travels in the 19th century.

Ojok’s name was announced today along with two others, Penny Melville-Brown (UK) and Ahmet Ustunel (US by way of Turkey), who represent a wide variety of ambitions and geographical areas, with blindness being the unifying factor. Ojok will use the $25,000 Holman Prize to teach blind and low vision Ugandans to become beekeepers and entrepreneurs as part of his HIVE Uganda program. “I always feel a lot of pain when I see blind and partially sighted people living below the poverty line with limited employment opportunities,” he says.

Ojok siphons honey from a drum into a jar

The award will provide Ojok’s trainees with 60 high quality beehives and the necessary honey extraction equipment, as well as honey harvesting suits, gloves and boots, for a new generation of blind and low vision beekeepers. “I will prove to the whole world that being ‘out of sight’ does not mean ‘out of mind,” says Ojok.

Get to know the other two prizewinners, Penny and Ahmet.

Holman Honorees: Meet the 2017 finalists.

Meet the blind judges who picked the winners.

Support The Holman Prize

The LightHouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired, which is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization based in San Francisco, is actively seeking sponsorships and support for the 2018 Holman Prize, including donations of equipment for the winner’s projects. To offer your support, contact holman@lighthouse-sf.org. Individuals may donate any amount using LightHouse’s secure form. For sponsorship inquiries, email us or call +1 (415) 694-7333.

For press inquiries, contact press@lighthouse-sf.org.

LightHouse Announces Three Inaugural Holman Prizewinners

LightHouse Announces Three Inaugural Holman Prizewinners

This fall, three exceptional blind individuals will set off around the world on adventures they never imagined possible as winners of The Holman Prize for Blind Ambition. Today, we are pleased to share their names with the world.

The three winners, Ahmet Ustunel, Penny Melville-Brown, and Ojok Simon, were announced Thursday, June 29, 2017 after a rigorous judging process that narrowed down the applicants to eleven highly competitive finalists. Each winning project embodies its own sense of adventure and ambition – whether it takes the winners around the world or allows them to build and foster social impact in their immediate community.

Created to honor “blind ambition” in all its forms, the annual $25,000 awards will spring-board future generations of entrepreneurs, adventurers and ambassadors in the blindness community.

With over 200 applicants from 27 countries, The Holman Prize saw stiff competition in its first year. All applicants were required to upload 90-second YouTube videos to pitch their idea for a dream project with a $25,000 budget, and later asked to submit formal proposals.

Named after the 19th century explorer James Holman (known around the world as “the blind traveler”) The Holman Prize aims to launch worthy projects that will change the public perception of blindness for years to come.

“We are thrilled to support these three individuals,” LightHouse CEO Bryan Bashin noted Thursday with the announcement. “They are all incredibly ambitious in different ways, and their projects will have a real effect on the way blindness is perceived globally. I think about Ahmet’s determination, Penny’s cultural savvy, and Ojok’s entrepreneurial spirit – this is what blindness looks like today. These three will change minds about what blind people can accomplish.”

The 2017 Holman Prize Winners

The Three Holman Prizewinners will fly to San Francisco in September 2017 for a week-long orientation before starting their projects on October 1. Once they land in San Francisco, the winners will not only meet and learn from each other, but they will engage with other blind teachers, technologists and leaders from LightHouse’s extended network. The winners will also create comprehensive plans to document and share their experiences along the way through video, audio, writing and other storytelling mediums.

Ahmet Ustunel’s project has a clear, unprecedented goal: to kayak solo, without eyesight, from Europe to Asia. With potential for a dramatic climax and high stakes, Ustunel’s proposal to cross the 3-mile Bosphorus Strait caught the attention of the Holman Prize Committee and proved to be a compelling and unprecedented undertaking. By training in California and working to develop a suite of non-visual guidance technology to thrive on his own in the water, Ustunel hopes to join the ranks of other great blind outdoor heroes such as Erik Weihenmayer, Lonnie Bedwell and others.

Get to know Ahmet.

Penny Melville-Brown has a project with a universal focus: food. With a deep belief in the power of food to connect people, Penny’s project is a bid to claim a place at the stove for blind chefs everywhere. Penny’s intentions are less about competition and perfection and more about connecting with others through culture and shared experience. Maybe she’s the blind Julia Child – or the blind Anthony Bourdain – either way, as Penny documents her travels and successes in her series, “Baking Blind,” the world will follow along with her.

Get to know Penny.

Ojok Simon will take on a drastically different kind of project than his fellow winners. Simon seeks to raise employment rates for blind and partially sighted individuals in rural regions of his home country of Uganda. His method? Teach them a very specialized and somewhat unlikely skill: beekeeping. For decades, Simon has been a passionate beekeeper finding ways to tend bees in nontraditional and non visual ways. Simon wants to impart his warm attitude and entrepreneurial spirit on other blind individuals in Africa and abroad, rather than seeing them relegated to poverty and reliance on charity.

Get to know Ojok.

Holman Honorees: Meet the 2017 finalists.

Meet the blind judges who picked the winners. 

Support The Holman Prize.

The LightHouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired, which is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization based in San Francisco, is actively seeking sponsorships and support for the 2018 Holman Prize, including donations of equipment for the winner’s projects. To offer your support, contact holman@lighthouse-sf.org. Individuals may donate any amount using LightHouse’s secure form. For sponsorship inquiries, email us or call +1 (415) 694-7333.

For press inquiries, contact press@lighthouse-sf.org.