Development
International Development Cooperation
A global cooperation project
The implementation of the ONCE Foundation for Latin America (FOAL) has meant the beginning of a global project which is allowing to strengthen the associative movement of Latin American blind and partially sighted people. At the same time, FOAL helps creating jobs and improving the educational level of blind people in those countries.
The ONCE Foundation for Latin America promotes the direct or coordinated development of programmes of labour promotion, vocational and professional training, social integration and social benefits for visually impaired Latin American people in their respective countries.
Area of activities of FOALhttp://foal.once.org/FOAL/es/About/CamposActuacion/)
FOAL’s main lines of activities are education, employment training, labour integration and strengthening of associations.
Countries in need of cooperation where ONCE can undertake actions are: Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay, and Venezuela.
Educational activities
The education of visually impaired children in Latin America has gone through significant changes over the last decades. Ministries of education are making efforts to introduce policies in favour of the inclusion of these children in regular education.
In this regard, although the inclusive education trend has been progressing favourably over the last years, it is not just a question of opening the doors of regular education centres to the population with special educational needs stemming from their condition as people with visual impairment.
There are various key elements for the successful introduction of School Integration such as the will of the family to choose a regular educational centre for their child, the opinion of teachers belonging to both special education centres and regular ones, the attitudes of classmates to learn the ways their companion will access information, the psychological adaptation of the child to changes, the amount of residual vision and the future diagnosis, the ability to socialize and the level of autonomy and self-esteem, the normality with which the child perceives his/her situation and the existing educational support inside and outside the school, as well as family and economic resources.
It is important to confront public and private institutions dealing with special and regular education of blind people with the realities of policies in force, and to become aware of the failures and identify among successful cases new lines of action that will allow reducing the level of absenteeism and dropout rates among this community. For all these reasons, FOAL wants to carry on promoting quality educational services that will allow guaranteeing more closely the right to education for all blind and severely partially sighted children in Latin America, understanding the need to combine national support through ministerial departments with local support in coordination with the authorities.
Professional training and employment
In order to bring a solution to the situation of extreme vulnerability faced by visually impaired adults, as 80% of them are without work and as they do not benefit from specific care and support in their respective countries, FOAL has implemented a Programme to improve employability based on employment training and support towards labour integration of visually impaired people, the "AGORA" Project (Occupational Management Offices in Latin America).
Through this project, we have confirmed that 70% of the population that approaches the labour integration programme has had less than 9 years of formal education, the equivalent of six years of primary education and a few additional years of basic secondary education. If we analyze the requisites of the employment sector, this level is insufficient when thinking about job placement for a person with or without disabilities, although this become worse in the case of people with disabilities.
AGORA works in coordination with rehabilitation services in each country in order for the training given in the programme to serve as comprehensive rehabilitation to minimize financial, psychological and social barriers faced by a person with disabilities when entering adult life and what this demands.
Finally, as a cross area for the visually impaired community, FOAL promotes comprehensive rehabilitation services as well as the access to information and communication technologies (ICT) through the use of technical aids.
PLAN OF ACTION OF THE ONCE FOUNDATION FOR SOLIDARITY WITH BLIND PEOPLE IN LATIN AMERICA
http://foal.once.org/FOAL/es/About/Queremos/)
Over 45% of the visually impaired population in Latin America is lacking basic education and around 80% is unemployed. This situation of extreme vulnerability gets even worse with the lack of resources for specific care at regional, national and local level, as well as the situation of extreme poverty and isolation in which this population has to live. In this context, labour training and integration of blind people is considered the only sustainable way to have access to a decent life with economic self-sustainability and social integration.
Taking into account that the rules of the ONCE Foundation for Solidarity with Blind People in Latin America (FOAL) have as their main objective the promotion of full labour and social integration of blind and partially sighted nationals in their respective countries and that this is coherent with its spirit to undertake educational projects, FOAL joined the objectives of the UN Millenium Declaration. From 2006 onwards, FOAL’s main objective in the education area is to encourage the integration of blind and partially sighted boys and girls of school age, working towards equal opportunities to access training through Braille and adapted services to their educational needs, planning actions geared towards training professionals in the use of technical aids and production of Braille, embossed and recorded materials, guaranteeing that children have basic learning materials necessary in centres specialized in blind and partially sighted education and that can be used also as educational resources in integrated education. This way, FOAL has extended the benefits of the actions developed, from the beginning, to promote access to education and culture in different phases.
FOAL still considers very necessary the cooperation with other institutions and associations established in Latin America to reach the objectives set by the Foundation. FOAL’s economic margin of action is very limited if we compare it with the number of blind people susceptible to benefit from services related with visual impairment. For this reason, one of its main strategies to seek support to reach its objectives is to set joint work initiatives with other organizations, institutions, NGOs and companies with interest in Latin America.
Projects
(http://foal.once.org/FOAL/es/Proyectos/)
FOAL dedicates its resources to support, lead and/or carry out actions designed in cooperation with different associations, entities and organizations of and for the blind in the nineteen Latin American countries where it carries out its activities.
Granting assistance, subsidies or technical support depends on the assessment of projects presented to FOAL.For additional information, please download the application form.
More concretely, only legally constituted associations and/or educational entities are exclusively allowed to make an application: assistance to study to make possible the students’ access to information and, therefore, their academic training; assistance to implement adult integration and/or training projects in the field of employment; initiatives to strengthen the associative movement of blind and partially sighted people.
The resources available for these projects may be in the form of financial, human or technological assistance and/or materials.
Furthermore, FOAL dedicates part of its technical resources to evaluate proposals of actions designed by other agents in some of the fields of action of their interest, becoming thus a mere co-financer of the presented projects. This would be the case for cross-disability projects where FOAL could cooperate exclusively in the part referring to the members of its community.
"AGORA" Project (http://foal.once.org/FOAL/es/Proyectos/Agora)
Occupational Management Offices in the Latin American Region
The Agora project involves the creation of a labour assessment service, in order to improve the employability of blind or partially sighted people in the countries where it is introduced.
The Project covers areas that go from vocational guidance to employment training, labour integration and, depending on existing resources and needs, technological adaptation of the workstation for blind or partially sighted people.
Among the activities carried out by the AGORA Teams there is the dialogue with public and private entities offering placements, creating thus a job listing which is administered according to the needs and abilities of the beneficiaries. The possible training deficiencies will be resolved through specific or general courses for a given position and company.
At present, the project is developed in eleven countries:
Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Ecuador, Peru, Nicaragua, Guatemala, El Salvador, Paraguay, Dominican Republic and Colombia.
FOAL carries out these projects in cooperation with public and private entities in each of the countries and, in addition, in the case of Ecuador, Peru, Nicaragua, Guatemala and Paraguay, they are co-financed by the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID). The already mentioned projects, except Agora Ecuador, have secured co-financing from AECID until 2010.In the case of Agora Colombia, the Madrid Autonomous Region is offering financing until 2012.
Educational Resource Centres
(http://foal.once.org/FOAL/es/Proyectos/CentrosProduccion)
Education is a basic objective of FOAL and, in this regard, work is carried out subsidiarily with Public Administrations, providing an important amount of technological and bibliographical resources, as well as basic and specific elements for the education of blind and partially sighted people.
Taking into account the importance given to securing an adequate level of educational quality for all Latin American blind students and the indispensable need to have basic materials such as text books, FOAL, jointly with the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science and the Organization of Ibero-American States is planning the creation of book production centres in the Latin American countries where they do not exist yet, as well as the provision of new equipment for already existing printing houses so that they will work in the future as reference resource centres in their respective countries.
Since their creation, the objective of these centres is to be under the responsibility of the Directorate of Special Education in their own country and they are designed to produce Braille, embossed and recorded materials.
