Author Description

Partnerships for Change: National Strategies - Regional Collaboration is a retrospective look at a more than 3 decades long development initiative, undertaken with support from the Open Society Foundations and The Nippon Foundation by the International Program of the Overbrook School for the Blind www.obs.org and the International Council for Education of People with Visual Impairment www.icevi.org.This development initiative has addressed the needs of blind and visually impaired individuals in under-resourced countries in their struggle for equal access to education and employment.The book follows the evolution of a small experimental US-based leadership development program for blind youth from throughout the world as it transitioned to regionally based programs in Eastern Europe and the Baltics and Southeast Asia.The development and impact of these programs is examined with particular attention to how the power of accessible technologies in the hands of educated and empowered blind youth can lead to important partnerships and changes at many levels of society. The written word is supplemented by 51 short, embedded videos that allow the reader to "meet" many of the blind youth who have become change agents creating more open and inclusive communities and are the true authors of this development story.