INTERNATIONAL INITIATIVE FOR THE BLIND A PRESENTATION BY Sabriye Tenberken & Paul Kronenberg

1. INTERNATIONAL INITIATIVE FOR THE BLIND A PRESENTATION BY Sabriye Tenberken & Paul Kronenberg OF THE INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURS THIRUVANANTHAPURAM, KERALA

2. INTERNATIONAL INITIATIVE FOR THE BLIND Our story of working on an International Initiative For the Blind, begins in May 1998 when we (Sabriye from Germany & Paul from Holland) founded Braille Without Borders and its first Project : Rehabilitation and Training Centre for the Blind at Llasa in Tibet.

3. INTERNATIONAL INITIATIVE FOR THE BLIND In May 1998 we left the comfort of our lives and our homes in Europe in pursuit of a challenge that seemed daunting if not impossible to achieve : bringing light into the lives of the 30000 blind children of Tibet, who were given up as a total loss and confined to lives of darkness and hopelessness by that society. Tibet’s first Rehabilitation and Training Centre for the Blind was started as a preparatory school for elementary school children with 6 children collected from distant, inaccessible and inhospitable parts of the vast Tibet Autonomous Region. The children had to come and live and learn at the school and had first to get used to each other's dialects. A local teacher who was soon found had herself to be taught the Tibetan Braille script which I (Sabriye) had developed. Astonishingly, soon after, the children learned the Tibetan Braille alphabet on wooden boards using Velcro dots, and in just 6 weeks they had learnt all the 30 Tibetan characters and were able to count in three different languages (Tibetan, Chinese and English). We knew then that we had found our life’s mission.

4. INTERNATIONAL INITIATIVE FOR THE BLIND In the 12 years of hard, unremitting work that have passed since, both Braille Without Borders and its Tibet Blind School have come a long way and earned world recognition and acclaim as a success story. The Tibet School has become well established with programmes for imparting literacy, education and a wide range of skills. Its first students have graduated, some having acquired advanced learning in the UK, and have become its leaders ready take over the reins of administration. By the year 2008 we felt confident that it was time to hand over the School to its own leaders and ourselves move on. We now started seeing that a large number of countries, especially in the third world, presented the same problems that we started with in Tibet : huge blind populations steeped in illiteracy and poverty and spread over vast countrysides, ill-connected by roads and commuications, and ill served by health and educational services.

5. INTERNATIONAL INITIATIVE FOR THE BLIND Here were the 2002 figures (in millions) of the World’s Blind Population given by the World Health Organization :

6. INTERNATIONAL INITIATIVE FOR THE BLIND What was the reality, the facts behind these figures ? 90% of the world’s blind live the third world. For most of them, blindness is combined with illiteracy, unemployment and poverty. The vast majority of them remain excluded and beyond the reach of the educational systems of their countries Their sad condition can change only by a world programme for that brings them literacy, education and employable skills. The lessons of Tibet had taught us a lot. We could not obviously go over the same steps by ourselves one country after another. But could we not train others to do so in each country ? Thus it was that the idea of an International Institute of Social Entrepreneurs took shape. A happy convergence of circumstances led us to set up the IISE in a beautiful location in Kerala in India.

7. INTERNATIONAL INITIATIVE FOR THE BLIND Here then is how in January 2009 we got started with first batch of trainees of the IISE

8. INTERNATIONAL INITIATIVE FOR THE BLINDAnd these are our first Graduates and the countries they are from India : Pynhoi Tang (Pin), Jessica (from Germany) Ghana : Julius Braimah, Eric Kwable Ofori Kenya : Jayne Waithera (Jane) Robert Sabwami (Obama) Lucy N.K. Karimi (Lucy) Sierra Leone : Mohamed Salia (Sunny Boy) Liberia : Victor N.G. Gaigaie (Munya) Johnson K. Korrtue (Kona), Sahr James Patrick Johnson (Wigo Zigo) Madagascar : Holiniaina Rakotoarisoa (Holi), Martin Niry, & Karin Broeske (from Norway) Saudi Arabia : Hussni Bugis Tibet - China : Gyentsen (Gompo), Kyila Thailand : Yoshimi Horiuchi Nepal : Khom Raj Sharma

9. INTERNATIONAL INITIATIVE FOR THE BLINDAnd these are the Projects that they have prepared for their countries India : Early Intervention Centre (Pin), Mobile Support Services (Jessica) Ghana : Computer Training & Counselling (Julius) Preparatory School For Blind) (Eric) Kenya : Awareness Training on Albinism (Jayne) Computer Literacy and Employment (Obama) Resource Support Centre for Blind (Lucy) Sierra Leone : Rehabilitation of war widows (Sunny Boy) Liberia : Literacy for Rural Blind Children (Munya, Kona, Patrick) Poor children rescue (Sahr)) Madagascar : Support Services for the Blind (Martin, Karin) Education Access to Blind (Holi) Saudi Arabia : Medical Massage Centre Employing Blind (Hussni) Tibet-China : Braille Library & Book Production (Gompo) Kindergarten Blind School (Kyila) Thailand : Mobile Library Services (Yoshimi) Nepal : Skills Development Centre (Khom)

10. INTERNATIONAL INITIATIVE FOR THE BLINDHere are the trainees, country-wise of the current 2010 batch

11. INTERNATIONAL INITIATIVE FOR THE BLINDWhere do we go from here ? Our Social Entrepreneurs now need to be able to generate and implement the projects that they have generated during their training at IISE. They will need to muster financial and organizational supports. There will be clearly be long gestation periods for their projects to take shape. Can some meaningful, concurrent activity be undertaken while so waiting ? Can they try some out-of –the-box ideas in the meantime that will lead the blind of their countries more quicklyinto literacy, education and employment. Surely, this cannot be brought about by a small number of blind schools that have a tiny intake of hundreds or the larger number of mainstream schools which are unwilling too take in blind children, or in both cases are far beyond the physical reach of the millions of blind children living in the distant villages of the vast countrysides of the countries of the third world. Can something be done to take literacy to the blind wherever they might be. It is here that the other Initiatives presented here today need to take over from oour own Initiative. We find some powerful ideas in today’s National Initiative For the Blind, particularly the idea of the Mobile Blind School. But all this will need huge Governmental and Non-Governmental supports. We would therefore appeal to National Governments and World Organizations like UNICEF and UNESCO and International Servvice Organizations like Rotary, Lions, SightSavers, CBM, ICEVI and others to come out with bold Initernational Initiatives. Small NGOs like Vidya Vrikshah, Worth Trust and IISE we can only provide good and proven credible models such as have been presented here today.