Projects

Some of our current projects, funded in part from a grant from the Hilton-Perkins Foundation, are:

• Increasing our outreach efforts, by mailing brochures to Massachusetts’ neonatal intensive care units (NICUs), level II nurseries, and Lions Clubs. By doing this, we hope they will spread the word about MAPVI’s existence to their families, clients, and colleagues, thus helping to ensure those individuals have access to additional resources about visual impairments. This expands upon our 1997 outreach effort which involved doing a similar mailing to Massachusetts early intervention offices, ophthalmologists, Special Education directors, teachers of the visually impaired, orientation and mobility specialists, and various blindness-related organizations.
• Continuing our efforts to educate and train MAPVI members and friends about various technology topics such as accessing information through the Internet and games which are accessible to children with visual impairments. This year, we will emphasize taking our most popular speaker topics to various parts of the state, to ensure access by a wider audience.
• Expanding our web site to share information from our speaker meetings, past newsletters, event fliers, family photographs, etc.
• Offering a wider variety of social and experiential activities for our children and their families in various parts of the state, including opportunities to talk with others in similar circumstances.