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European Expert Meeting on Ageing People with Visual Impairment

(April 2011, Netherlands)

The expert meeting was organised on the initiative of ICEVI Europe and under the support of Royal Dutch Visio. In general this meeting was devoted to the theme “ageing people” that will be one of the themes of the Global ICEVI-Europe Conference 2013 in Istanbul.
The meeting was attended by about 20 European key persons from service providing organisations. All participants presented different practices and services, methods and approaches, projects and programmes that could be applied in practice. It was a great meeting of experts from different countries - in one saying – a good quality of life and social inclusion of ageing people.
After the meeting we asked Tatjana Gorash - the expert from Moldova about how much this sharing will be useful for her work in Moldova.

The Feedback from Moldova: Necessary actions which are needed to be taken in order to improve the situation of older people with visual impairments in the Republic of Moldova.
Participation at the International Expert Meeting represents a true experience and necessity for the Republic of Moldova. The good practices learned at the meeting can be applied in our country in order to improve the quality of living of people with visual impairments and especially of elderly people with visual disability who are at the moment in a very complicated situation.
Elderly people with visual impairments must confront many major problems in Moldova such as economic, social and the insufficiency of quality services. Our target group- older people with visual impairments are not taken into account as a group with special needs, but are included as socially vulnerable people. So these people have many unsolved difficulties being often socially excluded.
In order to improve the standard of living and also to improve the quality of the services for this group it is important to take the first steps to solve the multiple obstacles that they must confront. It is necessary to evaluate and monitor the implemented actions step by step.

In order for Republic of Moldova to enjoy the progress and improvement of the situation for this group of people, and progress gradually, we believe that currently it is appropriate to focus on these benchmarks.

It is necessary to undertake a census of people with visual impairments, as today we do not know the exact number of blind and visually impaired people that are in Moldova.

Moldova Blind Union could make a substantial contribution to enhance the lives of elderly people who are visually impaired by direct involvement in the implementation of these measures mentioned above and by carrying out planned activities.
It is important that implementation of these actions be effective in one way or another for each person with visual impairments in Moldova.

Thanks, Tatjana, for the widely and open concept of the situation of elderly people with v.i in Moldova.

Liliya Plastunova
Representative of ICEVI-Europe on EE Countries
e-mail: lp at icevi-europe.org

Tatjana Gorash
Moldova Blind Union
e-mail: tatiana.gorash at gmail.com


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