LAUREN JOY LIEBERMAN
The College at Brockport, New York City
Title: International Service Developed, Directed the first Camp Abilities
Biography
Biography: LAUREN JOY LIEBERMAN
Abstract
A sports camp for children with visual impairments, blindness, or deaf blindness at the College at Brockport in 1996. Since then we have served over 1,200 children with visual impairments. We have trained over 1,500 professional preparation students on how to teach children with visual impairments.
The Camp Abilities model has been adopted in over 19 states, one territory, and six countries. Several thousand children and thousands of university professional preparation students have been trained to teach children with visual impairments due to this program. Each year two graduate students on the Camp Abilities grant learn how to plan and implement a Camp and many have graduated and started camps around the US.
Successes have included features on HBO, CNN, and The Sunday Morning Today Show. Many of our athletes have joined their after school sports teams, college sports teams and we even have some campers go on to be Paralympians such as Martha Ruether (2016 in Rio!)