EFA-VI Global Campaign

The Education for All Children with Visual Impairment (EFA-VI) is a global campaign and program of the International Council for Education of People with Visual Impairment (ICEVI), acting in partnership with the World Blind Union (WBU), to ensure that all girls and boys with blindness and low vision enjoy the right to education. The development of the EFA-VI Campaign can be analysed in terms of the following 5 stages:

• Conceptualization Stage (2003 to 2006) when the campaign was conceived, Global Task Force formed, draft Business Plan developed and the Campaign launched at the 12th World Conference of ICEVI held in Kuala Lumpur in 2006.
• Experimentation Phase (2007 to 2011) when ICEVI introduced the campaign in 12 focus countries which resulted in the development of good practices that could be emulated in other countries.
• Consolidation Phase (2012) which was characterized by ICEVI analyzing the strengths and limitations of the campaign by doing a SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats).
• Expansion Phase (2013 to 2015) when ICEVI expanded the campaign to non-focus countries too and strengthened its regions to collaborate with international agencies, larger initiatives on Education For All, INGDOs, UN Bodies, etc.
• Advocacy Phase (from 2016 onwards) can be characterized by the strengthening of the advocacy front and also actively work with the Governments, local NGOs, organizations of Blind people etc., to facilitate quality education for children with visual impairment.

Tangible results of the EFA-VI Campaign

Since the launch of the EFA-VI Global Campaign in 2006, both ICEVI and the World Blind Union continued to increase awareness of the importance of including the education of children with disabilities in national general education initiatives.

Our present and past international partners including CBM, Asian Foundation for the Prevention of Blindness, Francophone Blind Union, Light for the World, ONCE, NextSense Australia, Perkins School for the Blind, Royal National Institute of Blind People, Sightsavers, The Norwegian Association of the Blind and Partially Sighted, Overbrook School for the Blind, The Royal Dutch Visio, Vision Australia etc., have been promoting education of children with visual impairment in many countries in the developing regions and strongly supported the EFA-VI campaign activities.

Though only a few focus countries were taken up for EFA-VI implementation in early years of the campaign, the ICEVI regions started implementing the campaign activities in multiple countries within each region since 2012 and the countries included Bolivia, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Nepal, Pakistan, Bhutan, Sri Lanka, India, Palestine, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Ethiopia, Ghana, Mozambique, Uganda, Swaziland, Kenya, Malawi, Burkina Faso, Philippines, Thailand and Cambodia.

ICEVI used all mechanisms to collect reliable data on enrolment of children with visual impairment in many of these countries to see whether the enrolment rate was really increasing as a result of collective interventions of all stakeholders that included local Governments, ICEVI, WBU, International Organisations, local bodies etc.

Additional Enrolment of CWVI:

The campaign has contributed to the additional enrolment of children with visual impairment in schools. The following table describes the country wise data on additional enrolment since the inception of the programme. The data includes only the countries where we could gather reliable data from the national contacts and the regional boards of ICEVI.

Screening and Capacity Building Programmes:

Capacity Building Programmes were organized on various themes such as Low Vision, Early Detection and Assessment, Adapted Learning Materials, Abacus, Braille, Education of MDVI, Inclusive Education, Visual Stimulation, Orientation and Mobility, Child Protection Policies, Role of Parents in Education of Children with Visual Impairment, Activities of Daily Living etc. Screening of children was also conducted and optical devices were provided. The country wise details of the beneficiaries are given in the following table.

In summary, more than 650 programmes were conducted and around 120 thousand students, teachers and parents have been benefited from the EFA-VI global campaign. The campaign has demonstrated that education for all initiative will become a reality when children with disabilities in general and children with visual impairment in particular are included in the mainstream education system.