Welcome to the 50th anniversary of the founding of The International Council for Education of People with Visual Impairment (ICEVI), to be held in Noordwijkerhout, the Netherlands. I hope your tickets are purchased and bags packed for what will be a celebration of 50 years of world conferences recognizing not only the growth and development of programs serving children and youth who are blind or visually impaired around the world but defining new versions for the new millenium. The goal of the conference is working together in order to move toward a more inclusive community.
This will be ICEVI's eleventh conference and my sixth! The first ICEVI conference was held in 1952, also in the Netherlands, the organization's birth place. It wasn't until 25 years later that I was able to attend my first ICEVI in July of 1977 in Paris, France - a meeting I will never forget! Meeting people for the first time from around the world that I had only read about was exciting to say at least. Making new friends and contacts from every part of the world was a professional and personal growth experience that has continued to benefit me. Watching translators work feverishly so all can learn, via earphones, from any person presenting, regardless of the language spoken, is still a thrilling sight for me to this day. I wonder how simultaneous translation was dealt with back in 1949?
A Very Brief History
In August 1949 an International Conference of Workers for the Blind was held at Oxford University in England. The object of the meeting was to draft a series of statements which described a minimum program for blind persons. Among the participants were several people whose primary interest was the education of blind children. Since the agenda at Oxford was mainly concerned with the problems of blind adults, these educators proposed that a separate conference on education be held in the near future.
Out of the Oxford meeting came a permanent world organization called The World Council for the Welfare of the Blind, (now World Blind Union), and when this council med in Paris two years later, the educators who had been at the Oxford Meeting formed themselves into a Committee on Education. To avoid duplication or competition with The World Council, the Education Committee asked for affiliation with them. The Council graciously named them its "Committee on Education" which gave status to a small independent group.
On 1952 the Education Committee became an independent organization and held its first International Conference of Educators of Blind Youth in Bussum, Netehrlands with Dr. Gabriel Farrell as conference chairman. From then on there were world meetings every fuve years, and there were thre changes of names for the organization.
1952 Bussum, Netherlands
International
Conference of Educators of Blind Youth
1957 Oslo, Norway
1962 Hanover, West Germany
1967 Watertown, Mass., USA
International
Council of Educators of Blind Youth
1972 Madrid, Spain
International
Council for Education of the Visually Handicapped
1977 Paris, France
1982 Nairobi, Kenya
1987 Wurtzburg, Germany
1992 Bangkok, Thailand
The
International Council for Education of People with Visual Impairment
1997 Sao Paulo, Brazil
2002 Noordwijkerhout, The Netherlands
Facts About Blindness
Causes of Blindness in Children
Preventable causes: Vitamin A defiency, measles, ophthalmia neonatorum and rubella syndrome cause congenital cataracts. Some heredo-familial diseases amenable to genetic counselling may also be considered to be preventable and treatable.
Treatable causes: Cataract, retinopathy of prematurity and developmental glaucoma are conditions that can be successfully treated. Many children can benefit from correction of refractive errors and some of them with residual vision may be helped with Low Vision Devices. More than half of childhood blindness is avoidable (preventable or treatable).
Welcome
Please join us in The Netherlands for your first or eleventh ICEVI conference as the case may be! Yes, there may be some participants who have been fortunate enough to have attended all eleven ICEVI conferences - come and meet them personally!
The theme of the conference "New Visions: Moving Toward an Inclusive Community" will promote an international exchange of ideas, research, practices and future trends. It will embrace the last decade of international policy on inclusion for all, drawing om such documents as UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, UNESCO's Salamanca Statement and The Dakar Declaration.
Come learn about this and much more - hope to see you there.
Susan Jay Spungin, Ed.D.
Thematic Editor