More About What We Do

Dixie Land Guide Dog Users, Inc., reaches out to our community in an honest effort to help others through education, inspiration and active participation. Our positive, pro-active approach is best exemplified by availing our qualified teams to go into businesses and organizations and offer "Sensitivity & Awareness" training to their members and/or staff. We've found these sessions seem to form a bridge of understanding over a gaping hole of ignorance or misconception. We always try to provide honest, helpful, personable people who can actually relate to the various types of businesses or civic groups. In the past, our efforts have resulted in helping to revise policies and promote positive harmonious relations between the sighted and blindness communities.

Dixie Land was the founder of the Southern Regional Top Dog Workshops, back in January 2006. That event was so very well received that it became an annual event and has been hosted in North Carolina, Georgia and Florida. Dixie Land was proud to host a second Top Dog in Charleston, SC, in 2010. We truly believe the success of having such a weekend-long event is attributed to its affordability, accessibility and availability.

Dixie Land is reaching out to our blindness community by scheduling programs at various schools and campuses around our state to inform as well as motivate our blind brothers and sisters. We believe the key to educating the sighted community is through more blind people using their canes or guide dogs effectively, confidently and competently.

Dixie Land also believes in its youth and has, to date, helped in sending at least one local blind kid to California to participate in the National Braille Challenge. We also support our blind youth by supporting various other activities like Camp Leo (the South Carolina summer camp for blind children sponsored by Lions International) and the recently established Children's Chaplaincy of Music By Laurel Jean.