Vol. 11 No. 1 - Winter 2010

Message from the President

Kirk Adams – President and CEO, The Lighthouse for the Blind, Inc.

Happy New Year! It’s the dawn of a new decade, and we have big plans for the year ahead. In June of 2009, The Lighthouse for the Blind, Inc. Board of Trustees adopted a strategic plan focusing on our “big, hairy, audacious goal” of creating and sustaining 500 livable wage jobs for people who are blind by December 31, 2016. This would more than double our current number of blind employees.

On the surface this may seem overly ambitious, but looking back over the past three years we have seen our number of blind employees grow from about 150 to over 230. Now, we just need to keep up the pace.

Over the next twelve months we will be focusing on key strategies to grow jobs for people with visual disabilities throughout the state:

• Building on our Core Manufacturing Capabilities: This means making sure we have state-of-the art machining equipment that is fully accessible to blind and Deaf-Blind machinists. We will outfit all of our milling machines with talking interfaces and screen magnification. In addition to manufacturing airplane parts, our machinists look forward to making our first batch of entrenching tools for the United States Army this year.
• Developing Service Businesses: As service businesses become more prominent, we are keeping up with the trend. Services such as contact centers, contract management services, and document imaging offer a new range of job opportunities for blind people. We are actively exploring and analyzing new services we can add to open up new employment possibilities for blind and Deaf-Blind people.
• Physical and Geographic Expansion: The Inland Northwest Lighthouse continues to grow — both in revenue and the number of blind employees. Just as our Seattle and Spokane branches are expanding, we also plan to add new Base Supply Centers to expand jobs across the west coast.
• Expand Accommodations and Training Opportunities: As we tenaciously pursue new job opportunities for blind and Deaf-Blind individuals, we will also purposefully pursue our goal of becoming a leader in accessibility, assistive technology, education, and training for people who are blind, Deaf-Blind, and blind with other disabilities.

We have our work cut out for us in moving these strategies forward, so we are building our Foundation to support opportunities empowering blind and Deaf-Blind individuals. More than ever, our partnership with the Northwest community will play a crucial role in creating opportunities for people with visual and multiple disabilities. Community support, board leadership, and our employees’ dedication will help us to grow jobs in the face of the tremendous inequalities in employment facing the blind community today.

Our goals are ambitious, but our team’s dedication and purpose are clear. Working together with our partners and supporters, we will accomplish remarkable things over the next twelve months.

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