Letter from the President
Dear Colleagues,
It is a special pleasure for me to write to you through this issue of The Educator. As I compose this letter, my desk calendar reminds me that in less than a year many of us will gather at the Leeuwenhorst Congress Centre, Noordwijkerhout, the Netherlands to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the founding of ICEVI.
“New Visions: Moving Toward an Inclusive Community” is our conference theme and it promises to be a very memorable occasion. Heather Mason, Chairperson, Program Committee reports that the program is coming together well. By the time this reaches you, I hope many more of you will have submitted abstracts for the consideration of the Program Committee. Under the leadership of Hans Welling, Chairperson of the Host Committee a warm and very well planned Dutch welcome is being prepared.
Grace Chan, ICEVI Regional Chairperson, East Asia has agreed to head the sponsorship committee and is working hard to assist members from developing countries to participate in this historic meeting. All requests for sponsorship must go through regional committees. Please review the criteria that the Sponsorship Committee has developed and if you feel that you might qualify for some form of support direct your inquiries to your Regional Chairperson or Deputy Regional Chairperson. The Sponsorship Committee will not accept applications which have not come through the office of the Regional Chairperson or his/her Deputy.
We hope that many of our readers will be with us in the Netherlands from July 27-August 2, 2002 to help us celebrate a half century of ICEVI work on behalf of blind and low vision persons throughout the world. Further details regarding the 11th World Conference may be found on the ICEVI website www.icevi.org or by e-mailing or faxing the Conference Secretariat in the Netherlands: E-Mail: icevi2002@congres.net Fax: +31 24 3601159.
Preparations for our world conference tend to dominate our thinking and our work as we near the end of each quinquennium, However, I want you to know that the ICEVI Executive Committee has been working hard on a number of fronts to move our organization forward in the spirit of the policy document we adopted in Sao Paulo.
The first of those efforts is in your hand at this moment. The Educator has moved into a new generation with each issue focused on a specific theme; the first being Literacy. It has taken a great deal of work by many people to bring you what I hope you will agree is a new and improved ICEVI publication. Top on the list of persons to be thanked for this effort is our hard working Vice President, Harry Svensson, who assumed the publication portfolio when he recently became Vice President. Working alongside Harry in bringing you this “new Educator” are Ken Stuckey, Editor, Susan Spungin, Thematic Editor, our Secretariat in India, our Spanish language issue coordinators in Uruguay, Dr. M.N.G. Mani who will produce the Braille English language edition and all the members of the Publications Committee whose names you will find listed on the masthead. A real team effort. Thanks to all for your hard work.
For the past year your Principal Officers have devoted much of their energy to two major priorities; improving the financial health of ICEVI and improving communications. I am pleased to report to you that while there still remains much to be done, we have made very significant progress.
Thanks to the loyalty and support of our INGO Partners: the Asian Foundation for Blindness Prevention, Aurora Ministries, Christoffel Blindenmission, Foundation Dark and Light Blind Care, Helen Keller International, Perkins School for the Blind, Sight Savers International and the Spanish National Organization of the Blind funding for our core budget, as well as support for many regionally based projects, has increased substantially over the past year.
At the suggestion of Richard Porter, a member of the Executive Committee a special ICEVI/INGO Cooperation Fund was been established and is now supporting a number of ICEVI projects in Africa, Asia, East Asia and Latin America. One of the best ways we can make ICEVI “real” to our members is to support efforts which improve their ability to serve the children with whom they work. The ICEVI/INGO Cooperation Fund is an excellent way of making this happen. Please contact your Regional Chairperson or Deputy Chairperson for further details on the application process, if you feel you have a small project that will benefit educators in your country.
Improving communications with the members of our International Consultative Committee (ICC) and our partner organizations was another priority of the Principal Officers set in March, 2000. With the energy and support of our Secretary, Mrs. Nandini Rawal, the ICEVI Newsline (an electronic newsletter) has been created. As I prepare this letter for The Educator, Nandini is putting the final touches on the 3rd issue of Newsline. Although this communication was primarily established as a vehicle for ICC communication, we are happy to place any of you with e-mail access on the distribution list. If you would like to receive Newsline write to Nandini at bpaicevi@ad1.vsnl.net.in.
The ICEVI website <www.icevi.org> is also a place that I encourage those of you with internet access to visit frequently. Harry Svensson and Victor Tsaran (ICEVI Webmaster) welcome your suggestions and contributions. Spreading the word about ICEVI in our respective countries is a responsibility we all share. Introduce the ICEVI website to your friends and colleagues. For those without internet access, ICEVI has a new brochure that you may request from our Secretariat in India.
At the heart of our new policy has been an effort to build our regional units and I am pleased to say that we have made a good deal of progress. Over the past year, there have been well attended ICEVI regional conferences in Asia, East Asia, Europe and Latin America. I have had the privilege of participating in all of these meetings. Both the “esprit de corps” and the high level of the papers presented made me feel very proud. Our regions are on the move and that, to me, is the best news of all.
As most of you will now know both the World Blind Union (WBU) and the International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness (IAPB) have new Presidents; Mrs. Kicki Nordstrom (WBU) and Dr. Hannah Faahl (IAPB). Both Kicki and Hannah bring to their positions a spirit of cooperation and collaboration. ICEVI is happy to be working closely with both organizations in the pursuit of goals of mutual interest. I urge each of you to do all that you can to reach out to these organizations in your country. Together we can speak with a stronger voice on behalf of those we serve.
Let me end this letter by reviewing with you some of the major decisions reached at our Executive Committee meeting in Chihuahua, Mexico in May.
The Finance Committee, under the leadership of Carla Herrera, Treasurer, presented a plan which calls for increasing the financial base of ICEVI through continued strengthening of the ICEVI/INGO Cooperation Fund, a scheme for organizational membership subscriptions and an effort to secure support from at least one major foundation during the coming year.
At our 10th World Conference in Sao Paulo a decision was made to bring about the necessary revisions in our current constitution to allow us to move from the status of Stifting (Foundation) to that of Association, under the laws of the Netherlands, where ICEVI is legally registered. The committee working on revising the constitution is headed by Mr. Colin Low. The revised constitution is designed to allow ICEVI to legally gain recognition as an “association” under Dutch law. The suggested revisions presented by Colin were received favorably by the Executive Committee. At this time, Colin Low, Bill Brohier and Nandini Rawal are incorporating suggestions that arose in discussion in a final document.
This revised constitution and by-laws will allow us to accomplish a regional realignment that has been under discussion for almost three years. Under the new constitution and by-laws ICEVI will have seven rather than eight regions. In effect, this will allow the current Middle East region and the Asian countries of the former USSR to become part of what is now the Asia region which will in the future be known as West Asia. There are never any easy or perfect answers to questions regarding regional realignment. However, the Executive Committee agreed that these changes will address both the need expressed by our current Middle East region and allow six of our seven regions to be fully aligned with the new WBU regions. We hope such realignment will foster greater cooperation with WBU. ICEVI’s current Pacific region will be maintained.
We hope to soon adopt this revised constitution and by-laws, allowing us to change our legal status under Dutch law. The revised constitution and by-laws will be printed in the next issue of The Educator.
As the Executive Committee looked to the future there was unanimous agreement that ICEVI has within it much untapped potential to serve as an international advocate for equalizing educational access for all blind and low vision persons. Many excellent suggestions related to future directions and programs were raised. The Executive Committee agreed that this is the right time for ICEVI to engage in a formal strategic planning process, with the objective of presenting a plan for future directions to the delegates gathered at the 11th World Conference in the Netherlands. A Strategic Planning Work Group has been formed and you can expect to hear more about developments in this area in future issues of The Educator and the ICEVI Newsline.
As you can see, it has been a busy but very gratifying year. For me this would not have been possible without the tremendous support of my organization, the Overbrook School for the Blind. In closing this letter I want to acknowledge the very special contribution that that Overbrook is making to ICEVI. My thanks are extended to Board of Managers, Dr. Bernadette Kappen, Director and my hard working assistant Ms. Wenru Niu.
I look forward to seeing many of you at our 11th World Conference and to communicating with you personally or through The Educator and Newsline between now and then.
Sincerely,
Lawrence
F. Campbell
President