Our trip to Kenya – a short review by Tony Ward

I would be delighted to update you on the Kenya trip.

The idea was conceived by Irene Mbari Kirika who lives in Atlanta and visited the exhibition there. She is originally from Kenya and founded an organisation called “inAble” which seeks to support development in schools for the blind in Kenya – she saw DID as a perfect opportunity to raise awareness of visual impairment and blindness and also advance her work in Kenya.

From Friday 24 until Tuesday 28 September we managed 7 workshop sessions. Some were attended by companies and some were mixed groups. The anchor group was from YPO (Young President’s Organisation) who incorporated the workshop as one of the events in their educational calendar and it was highly acclaimed by them.

There were four visually impaired people in the DID team – Tony Ward from Ireland, Lynn Cox and Yahye Said from the UK and Tonia Lumpkin from France. Andreas Heinecke also attended to promote the first ever DID in Africa and was an integral part of the success of the workshops.

It is very much hoped that this is the first of many more in Africa and Kenya in particular.