From the Director

The Iowa Department for the Blind will experience a 3.94-percent cut in state funding over last year’s initial budget. The impact of this lower budget means we may be leaving approximately $1 million in federal funding on the table for lack of match.

Although we believe we can weather 2011 if we’re careful, the impact of this loss will be acutely felt in 2012 if additional funding is not available. Hopefully, the economy will have turned around enough a year from now to allow the legislature to appropriate enough funding for us to capture all of our federal share once again.

Meanwhile, using Recovery Act funds through 2011, we have hired two new counselors. Jamie Corwin has completed her training and has begun working with VR clients in eastern Iowa. We hope to have the second counselor deployed soon in northwest Iowa as well.

In spite of the economy and all the job losses in Iowa, our counselors have continued placing blind Iowans in jobs. They have been exploring both the open and the hidden job markets to accomplish this with good results.

This year marks two major anniversaries for the Department. The Library opened its doors on July 1, 1960, and the Independent Living Program began serving older Iowans who are blind on July 1, 1980. Watch for upcoming events to mark these milestones. Events will be posted on our website at www.idbonline.org as soon as they are scheduled.

As part of these celebrations, we hope to launch an oral history project this year. This project will capture the memories of blind Iowans as witness to the changes which have occurred for blind people in Iowa and nationwide over the past century. If you are interested in telling your story, please let us know.

We will be collecting as many written stories as we can, and, if we get grant funding, 50 high-quality audio interviews for permanent archiving here and with the Library of Congress.

Sincerely,

Karen Keninger