ETI Connect

Many people with disabilities (PWDs) in underserved communities globally, including immigrants and refugees, lack access to specialized services, leading to their exclusion and underrepresentation. PWDs in these communities, which are coping with civil, political, and economic inequalities, face additional barriers including: language barriers; access to specialists in this field; access to internet/technology; and digital literacy. Further, COVID travel restrictions limited opportunities for specialists to provide training abroad. ETI Connect is an initiative to connect specialists in the field of TVI/O&M and underserved ETI beneficiaries globally. This initiative utilizes an eLearning portal to connect ETI beneficiaries around the world to specialists in their countries or who speak their language. This portal also hosts ETI specialized course materials and digital literacy trainings. If this scales globally, YVIs in underserved communities will have a noticeable increase in quality of life, and will feel valued, empowered, fully integrated, and able to contribute to society.

Underserved communities around the world lack access to basic and appropriate services for youth with vision impairments, and when YVIs are not supported and empowered through specialized training, they are less likely or able to participate in society. ETI Connect is focused on the inclusion of people with disabilities by equipping everyone, regardless of age, gender, education, location, or ability, with culturally relevant digital literacy and independent living skills to enable participation in the digital economy. There are over 1 billion PWDs globally – more than 15% of the population – and 90% of visually impaired people currently live in developing countries. Globally, PWDs are most likely to experience poverty, less education, and lower employment: only 2% of the visually impaired are formally educated. Via ETI Connect, we will promote digital literacy and independence training for YVIs by virtual specialized capacity building at the core of ETI’s virtual course offerings, which can lead to employment opportunities. To address digital literacy, ETI Connect offers a fully accessible platform where YVIs will receive specialized training on accessible technology and gain relevant skills to participate in the digital economy. Partnering organizations will provide internet cards and technological devices to families in underserved communities.

ETI has developed a one-of-a-kind initiative to connect specialists (Teachers for the Visually Impaired (TVIs), Orientation and Mobility (O&M)) with the most underserved families of YVIs, emphasizing refugee and immigrant families in the USA and abroad. ETI Connect’s eLearning portal matches ETI beneficiaries with TVI/O&M in the same country and/or who speak same language who will support their virtual training. ETI Connect solves the knowledge-language barrier by creating a virtual space where specialists can be matched to families all over the world, with criteria for matching taking into consideration language compatibility, cultural understanding, and specialist interests. ETI Connect is implemented via an accessible Learning Management System (LMS), offering three specialized courses: Family Workshop Series (FWS), Orientation and Mobility (O&M), and Activities of Daily Living (ADL). Through our eLearning portal, families have access to video lessons, electronic manuals, and live sessions with specialists as well as a virtual forum to support community building. ETI Connect promotes sustainable empowerment and inclusion for each community by combining specialized trainings and digital literacy to promote education and employment opportunities within the digital economy. ETI Connect offers a solution free-of-charge to families which avoids placing a financial constrain on low-income families. 

Many families with children with visual impairments and families in underserved communities globally do not have access to specialized life skills training available in their language, which can delay the empowerment and inclusion of children with disabilities in their families, schools, and communities. This is due to limited number of TVI and O&M specialists globally, particularly those who are bilingual or multilingual, and the lack of a unified global connection system for specialists and families. With ETI Connect, underserved families can have access to TVI and O&M instructors who speak their native language and/or reside in their country of origin. This access can support the continuous engagement of the family with the training and accelerate the empowerment and inclusion of the person with disabilities. ETI Connect partners with UN entities such as UNHCR to recruit refugee families to participate in this initiative. We also partner with American Printing House for the Blind ConnectCenter to disseminate our trainings around the USA to underserved families. To support the empowerment and inclusion of YVIs globally, ETI offers inclusive capacity training via life skills programs based on the expertise accumulated in 10 years of implementation of direct services for blind youth, families, and members of the community. Because ETI Connect is driven by one-on-one engagement between a family and their trainer virtually, each trainer can tailor their instruction to the specific families they are supporting, and therefore we will make sure to understand the needs of each family to best address them individually. Since participants’ needs are expected to change over time, one-on-one engagement between trainers and families support the training adaptation to families’ needs as they change. 

Simultaneously, ETI Connect also provides meaningful opportunities to certified specialists in the field of empowerment and inclusion of YVIs. ETI Connect will offer unique opportunities for specialists to connect and support the independent training of people with disabilities from culturally diverse communities, which will support the strengthening of their own cultural sensitivity and expand their professional experiences, building their resumes through their participation in this exclusive volunteer experience. Specialists will have the opportunity to support families in underserved communities in the USA and abroad, and work with refugee and immigrant communities. ETI Connect will also offer regular webinars on topics associated with how to be a culturally sensitive professional trainer via our platform. As we develop our solution, we will work with specialists to adjust curriculum, add recommended materials to the eLearning portal, and will consult with them to receive feedback on their volunteering experiences. Because most of the training that will take place via ETI Connect platform will be virtual, it will give trainers the opportunity to experience international volunteering with families abroad from the comfort of their own homes, which is particularly beneficial as most countries are still adapting to COVID and different vaccination rates. In the future, upon funding, ETI will also support on the ground training of families in diverse locations by financially contributing to offsetting travel costs for trainers who volunteer with ETI.

Our problem, solution, and population align with the challenge because ETI Connect improves digital literacy while simultaneously building capacity for participation in the digital economy for one of the most underserved communities globally – refugee and immigrant YVIs. ETI Connect addresses a complete lack of resources to unlock this group’s participation in the global digital economy by matching specialists with families to bridge the gap between TVI/O&M specialists and underserved ETI beneficiaries globally. Embedded within our specialized courses are materials to develop digital literacy for YVIs related to specialized accessible technology these youth need to participate in digital opportunities.

ETI Connect will be piloted with at least 15 refugee families in Lebanon in the Fall of 2021. Families are Syrian refugees registered with United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Mount Lebanon, Beirut, Lebanon. Participants have already been recruited and UNHCR has confirmed distribution of internet cards to support their participation in ETI Connect in 2021.

To support the empowerment and inclusion of YVIs globally, ETI offers inclusive capacity training via life skills programs based on the expertise accumulated in 10 years of implementation of direct services for blind youth, families, and members of the community. ETI creates programs that are specifically designed to identify and transform stigmas while simultaneously enabling individuals with disabilities to participate fully in society. ETI Connect identifies and capacitates local professionals in these communities as ETI Master Trainers. Through this approach, these individuals develop professional advantages in their fields and support the training of local families and other professionals in their own communities. Through our project, we capacitate key community members to become catalysts of change within their own communities, which promotes sustainable and long-lasting transformative impact within these communities. Our work is unique because, unlike most organizations that focus on disabilities, our humanitarian work is designed and implemented based on values-based lenses, which means that we operate with the understanding that inclusion of PWDs is a value for society at large. Through our value-based approach, we create a sustainable basis for inclusion that is tied to the understanding that inclusion for all is a value for all.

The planned impact of ETI Connect is directly informed by best Monitoring, Evaluation, Accountability and Learning (MEAL) practices utilized in the field of humanitarian work; our 10-year experience with our previous direct-programming; collaboration with experts in specialized fields; insights from implementing partners; scholarly research; the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs); and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD).

Short-term, success will be verified as follows:

- Achieve proposed target number of beneficiaries

- 70% of families inform having higher levels of confidence and motivation to execute specialized life skills training with their blind youth

- 60% of professionals inform adjusting their practices to better accommodate the needs of beneficiaries with visual impairments and their families

Long-term success will be verified as follows:

 - 70% of YVIs will be enrolled in any type of schooling (formal and informal) between 7 and 18 years old

- 35% of YVIs, above 18 years old, will be actively enrolled in jobs in the community

In the next decade, through ETI Connect, tens of thousands of YVIs in underserved communities will have a noticeable increase in quality of life, will feel valued and empowered, and will be fully integrated and contribute to society.

Our solution team includes: 3 full-time staff, 3 volunteer strategists, 1 volunteer MEAL coordinator, and 3 specialists volunteering as trainers. As we expand the initiative, we will have many more volunteer specialists as part of the solution team. We also have a 9-person volunteer communications team supporting with video development.

We strive to execute the vision of our Founder and Board Member and ETI’s CEO from 2011-2020, Sara Minkara. Sara lost her sight at 7 and founded ETI to promote the empowerment and inclusion of people with disabilities. ETI’s leadership and team is diverse and includes women with disabilities, whereby we embody the disability mantra: “nothing about us without us.” Our Executive Director, Anna Barbosa, has held numerous leadership positions both in the USA and in Lebanon while with ETI. Additionally, our specialized curriculum was designed by experts in the field of inclusive education. 

ETI is applying to Solve to support with piloting our ETI Connect initiative in 2021. Through ETI Connect, YVIs in underserved communities will have a noticeable increase in quality of life (based on key indicators). By elevating the quality of life of individuals with disability and other marginalized individuals, previously excluded and underrepresented voices will feel valued and empowered and will be fully integrated and able to contribute to society. If selected as a winner, we will have crucial funds to support the pilot of ETI Connect in Lebanon and grow it to communities around the world. In these communities, our program will create an inclusive future for those who currently do not have opportunities to engage in the digital economy.

ETI Connect is an initiative bridging the distance between specialists in the field of Orientation and Mobility (O&M) and Teachers for Visually Impaired (TVI) and underserved blind youth, predominantly within refugee communities, globally. For this reason, our initiative qualifies for The Andan Prize for Innovation in Refugee Inclusion. ETI Connect is uniquely built to overcome challenges that limit access to specialized training for blind youth refugees, including: language barrier, access to specialists, access to internet and assistive technology, lack of family engagement, and community stigma. Our model promotes refugee resilience, self-reliance and integration because it: 1) connects refugee families with specialists based on families’ language/needs; 2) our partnership with UNHCR recruits and funds refugee families with YVIs, offering them an opportunity to directly address CRPD and UN SDGs; and 3) supports YVIs and their primary caregivers with skills to sustain the empowerment and inclusion of PWDs. As the recipient of The Andan Prize, ETI Connect will be able to transition from a web-based platform and develop an ETI Connect Mobile App, which will greatly support the expansion of our work, increase the number of specialists and families, and support refugee families with youth with multiple disabilities. With simplified navigation, an ETI Connect App will help refugee families enter the digital economy faster by offering a user-friendly platform, supporting beneficiaries’ digital literacy skills, and facilitating specialist matching, which will greatly impact each refugee family’s access to invaluable knowledge and skills for empowerment, independence, employment, and inclusion in all levels of society.