The Vision 2020 program, an international campaign which has fixed the elimination of the main causes of preventable blindness in the world, wanted to stimulate permanent cooperation between governments, non government organizations, the private sector and single donors on the theme of visual prevention. In numerous cases, as a matter of fact, blindness and low vision are preventable, but this requires a wide collaborative effort on the part of all organizations involved in the fight against blindness. The WHO estimates that there are in the world today nearly 37 million blind people and 124 million persons living with low vision. Ninety percent of blind persons live in developing countries, particularly in rural areas and in diminished sectors of cities, where, because of precarious health and socio-economic conditions (malnutrition, diseases, lack of medicine and adequate cures), an individual has 10 additional probabilities to lose his sight compared to a person living in an industrialized country.
The association is now involved in a restructuring project of the Institut national d'éducation et de formation des aveugles of Thies in Senegal. From today, the 80 blind students aged between 8 and 18 years old, at the present time in the Senegalese institute, will be able to take advantage of educational aids: slates and styluses, paper for Braille writing and sound balls given by the Istituto Cavazza, to pursue with new resources on the difficult path towards independence.