History of Miami Lighthouse

A HISTORY OF BUILDING INDEPENDENT FUTURES AND A MORE INCLUSIVE SOCIETY

In the late 1920s, blind activist Dolly Gamble enlisted the Miami Lions and Miami Rotary clubs to help the blind achieve independence. From their efforts, the Florida Association of Workers for the Blind, which would later be called Miami Lighthouse, was born. Nearly a century later, we are Florida's largest nonprofit providing hope, confidence, and independence to the blind and visually impaired of all ages. Originally a 900-square-foot bungalow house in the 1930s, Miami Lighthouse's facility now encompasses over 150,000 square feet of space dedicated to education, training, research, and vision enhancement.

A HISTORY OF COLLABORATION

Miami Lighthouse has always valued collaboration. In the late 1920's, soon after Helen Keller exhorted the Lions Club to be "knights for the blind," a dedicated group of Floridians, led by Thomas Grady, who enlisted the Lions Club, and Dolly Gamble, a remarkable, young, blind activist and promoter of Braille literacy, worked together to found the Florida Association of Workers for the Blind. During the Depression, Marjorie Stoneman Douglas, Mrs. Charles Brickell, and Mrs. Harvey Firestone, among other notables, hosted garden party fundraisers.

As early as 1943, University of Miami Trustee Dr. Bascom Palmer and Miami Lighthouse discussed the establishment of an eye clinic to serve the local community. In 1947, Palmer was elected board president of Miami Lighthouse and announced that "he would do everything possible" to start "a clinic to treat the blind and persons with eye ailments which might lead to blindness." In 1948, the Miami Lighthouse purchased land on N.W. 17th Street, between 9th and 10th Avenues, across the street from Jackson Memorial Hospital. Shortly thereafter, Palmer announced plans for an institute costing $500,000 (about $6.5 million in 2024 dollars) to be built on the site. Dr. Palmer made it his life's work to raise funds and support for the eye hospital in cooperation with Miami Lighthouse. In 1960, the Miami Lighthouse contributed $305,000 (about $3.3 million in 2024 dollars) to construct an Eye Institute named in honor of Dr. Bascom Palmer. The current institute, opened in 1973, was built on the 17th Street site originally purchased by the Miami Lighthouse, under Palmer's leadership, in 1948. A strong collaboration between Miami Lighthouse and Bascom Palmer Eye Institute continues to this day, as both institutions transform lives through vision-related services and research.

As part of our education mission, Miami Lighthouse partners with academe on continuing education "Living with Low Vision" workshops for Occupational Therapists and Physical Therapists. In collaboration with universities throughout the U.S., nearly 100 occupational therapy and orientation and mobility students have completed their on-campus practicum experience at Miami Lighthouse.

Miami Lighthouse also contracts with the School Board of Miami-Dade County Public Schools (the third largest school district in the U.S.) for our early learning program, pre-kindergarten, kindergarten, first and second grades and for providing itinerant service and functional vision and learning media assessments for M-DCPS students, Braille transcribing, Adult Basic Education/GED, English as a Second Language for visually impaired adults, and the Florida Heiken Children's Vision Program.

ACCREDITATIONS

Accreditation is a value-added process that ensures that consumers (i.e., clients and students) are provided services under quality-based conditions, and that the organization operates at the highest level of quality and is positioned to generate the outcomes needed by the clients.

Miami Lighthouse was first accredited in 1978 by the National Accreditation Council for Blind and Low Vision Services (NAC). NAC accreditation subsequently came under the executive management of the Association for Education and Rehabilitation of the Blind and Visually Impaired (AER), and we have maintained our accreditation through AER to date. Since 2019, our Miami Lighthouse Academy has been an Accredited Professional Preschool Learning Environment as well as a Department of Children and Families Gold Seal Quality Program.

CHARITY NAVIGATOR RATING

Miami Lighthouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired has received 13 consecutive 4-star ratings, the highest rating possible, from the nation's premier independent nonprofit evaluator Charity Navigator. Attaining a 4-star rating indicates that our organization adheres to sector best practices, exceeds industry standards, and executes its mission in a financially efficient way. In addition, Miami Lighthouse successfully completed all four of the new Charity Navigator Encompass Beacons, which provide a comprehensive analysis of performance across four key domains with nearly perfect scores: Accountability and Finance 100%, Leadership and Adaptability 100%, Impact and Measurement 98%, and Culture and Community 100%.

ABOUT OUR PROGRAMS

We transform the lives of well over 90,000 blind and visually impaired individuals and their families annually from babies to seniors and schoolchildren in underserved communities statewide who fail their vision screening.

Today, the impact of our programs is statewide, national, and international:

• As a leader in inclusion, we have counseled presidential campaigns, state election boards and corporations on accessible website design.
• Our Florida Heiken Children's Vision Program, cited by the American Optometric Association as a national model other states should adopt, provides comprehensive eye exams and prescription glasses for underserved schoolchildren throughout Florida by taking primary eye health care directly to Title 1 schools using our fleet of mobile eye care units.
• Our Miami Lighthouse Academy innovative early learning inclusion model benefits students beyond the classroom with University of Miami research showing improvements in social and emotional development for both sighted and visually impaired children, which far exceeds the national average.
• Our Blind Babies Early Intervention and parenting programs, including our Parents' play days with their blind toddlers, promote a stronger family unit. Our Blind Babies Early Intervention Program was recognized as 2016 Program of the Year by The Children's Trust.
• Our Cortical Visual Impairment (CVI) Collaborative Center is addressing the number one cause of pediatric visual impairment in developed and developing countries by working to improve diagnosis and timely treatment of CVI. In 2023, The Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce awarded the Miami Lighthouse its coveted Nonprofit Business Innovative Excellence NOVO Award in recognition of its services to children especially as a leader in Cortical Visual Impairment.
• Our "Living with Low Vision" presentations on YouTube educate our elderly population on the most common age-related eye conditions such as macular degeneration, diabetic retinopathy, glaucoma, and cataracts and help seniors with limited resources improve the quality of their life.
• We continue to ensure our clients can take their place in the workforce and lead productive, fulfilling lives. We do this through our GED and ESOL classes for adults, offered in collaboration with Miami-Dade County Public Schools Adult Education; our nationally recognized music inclusion program, which trains students from Miami and around the world for employment in the music industry on campus and via our global Braille music distance learning program; our job-readiness training program that prepares teens and adults for mainstream, competitive, integrated employment.

OUR MISSION

Our mission statement is: "Through education, training, research and vision enhancement, Miami Lighthouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired provides hope, confidence, and independence to people of all ages." To carry out our mission, we will continue to innovate, to work to meet the needs of people of all ages affected by a visual impairment and to provide exemplary education and vision rehabilitation for our program participants and transparency and accountability to our donors.