Vision 2020, THE RIGHT TO SIGHT!
Twenty-one years ago, when we had just opened our preparatory school for the Blind in Tibet, we were invited by ICEVI to attend a conference in Beijing, with the promising name “Vision 2020”.
ICEVI, the International Council for Education of People with Visual Impairment is a network of organisations working for the blind. Together with the World Blind Union, ophthalmologists from all over the world were brought together with NGOs. The aim was to reduce preventable blindness, such as cataract to almost 0, by 2020. At that time, 2020 was far away in the future. This seemed to be doable if funding and the required technology was available.
Today, in the spring of 2020, we came to understand that not everything depends on money and technology. There are still an estimated 285 million visually impaired people worldwide, 39 million are completely blind, 90% of all these people live in poverty, less than half of all visually impaired children attend school. In the last 12 years we have trained over 70 visually impaired kantharis. Many of them have set up successful training programs for blind children, adolescents and adults. Here are a few examples:
Alieu, a 2011 kanthari graduate from The Gambia supports blind high school graduates so that they can integrate themselves into universities.
See StartUp
Ojok Simon, a 2012- and Alfred Okello, a 2017-kanthari, both from Uganda train blind youths and adults as beekeepers and environmental activists, see http://www.hiveuganda.org/ and http://otetuganda.org/
Sristi KC, a 2012 kanthari graduate from Nepal has founded a centre for dance, acting and adventure sports for the blind.
http://www.blindrocks.org/
Chhitup Lama, a 2010 kanthari from the Himalayas, started the first mobile school for the blind, riding on horseback through the most remote villages in Humla. Later he built a school for the blind in Simikot, Nepal.
http://headnepal.org/
And the list goes on…
But let’s get back to Vision 2020: maybe we haven’t yet managed to eliminate blindness completely and were not able to give back sight to the blind. But you can also see it this way: in the last few weeks, the Corona crisis has been opening all our eyes!