AMANDA STORY

She was born vision-impaired and totally lost her sight at age six, four years
before her family immigrated to Israel in 2007 from Solsona, Ilocos Norte. In
Israel, she flourished as a student at the Jerusalem Institute for the Blind. But in
Laoag, she had been unable to attend school because of her disability. Forced to
stay home, she often sang along to music on the radio.

Her mother, a guitarist, started writing music for her. She performed her
mother’s song about blindness at a music festival when she was eight. “They
dressed me in a pink dress, and I sang on stage. Suddenly I understood that I had
been given a gift,” Amanda told the Israeli women’s magazine. “True, I
couldn’t see, but I could sing. Already I was less sad. I found a reason to live:
the dream that I would be a famous singer, that I would move people with my
song, that I would touch them through music and show that despite the disability
I am a person.”

Amanda indeed became a singer. She and her friend Tahliah Reyes – who also
is blind – are in Shalva Band that comprised of professional musicians with
disabilities affiliated with Jerusalem-based nonprofit organization. In 2017, she
was chosen as the first Bnei Menashe community member to light an
Independence Day torch in Jerusalem.