About CBM

CBM is the oldest and largest organization with the primary purpose of improving the quality of life for the blind and disabled living in the world's most disadvantaged societies. We provide preventative, medical, rehabilitative and educational services to millions of people each year. CBM supports more than 1,000 projects in 113 countries, and our aid is available to all people regardless of religion, nationality, race, or gender.

CBM's goal is to find, rescue, and rehabilitate these forgotten people—giving children hope, taking whole families and communities out of grinding poverty, and building bridges between them and their communities.

Caring for People in Need

We are a 100-year-old Christian organization. At the heart of the CBM's philosophy of service is the belief that disabilities affect not only the individual, but also the family and the community. We believe that the disabled should have every opportunity to participate fully in community, school, and church. Therefore, we are solidly committed to the long-term sustainability and cultural sensitivity of our projects, embedding them within the support structures of family and community.

CBM is able to address the serious challenges facing the disabled because of our vast network of partners, our focus on training nationals, our Christian values, and our collaboration with other Non Governmental Organizations (NGOs) and government agencies. CBM knows from experience that community-based care, when teamed with medical and rehabilitative centers of excellence, is a powerful force for wholeness and transformation.

CBM’s international headquarters is in Bensheim, Germany and has affiliate offices in 10 countries including Australia, Belgium, Canada, Germany, Italy, Ireland, New Zealand, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the U.S. CBM-USA, is an independent 501(c)3 organization, focused on raising the visibility of the importance of blindness prevention and disability programs in the developing world, identifying and mobilizing supporters for CBM's work, and generating support in the U.S. for CBM projects abroad .

Partner Network

CBM believes that the future of blindness prevention and disability support must be built on local capacity. For 40 years, all of CBM's aid projects have been conducted in partnership with local organizations, including churches, missions and NGOs. We currently partner with over 700 organizations worldwide. Through our overseas Regional Offices, we identify project partners, jointly develop interventions, and carefully manage all funds and budgets.

Training Emphasis

CBM is committed to building medical, rehabilitative and administrative expertise in local people. We believe this is the only way to make our service delivery appropriate, effective, and sustainable. By training national workers to care for their neighbors, we support grassroots disability screening (e.g. cataract finders), health care delivery, and rehabilitation. CBM effectively and lovingly serves the poor through over 10,000 staff worldwide, of whom 96% are nationals.

Christian Values Driven

CBM only works with the most forgotten and marginalized people, living in the poorest countries of the world. Our Christian values drive the integrity of our work, the genuine core for those we serve, and the practical decisions of our business and service delivery. We work closely with national and local churches in the countries where we work. Through those local churches, our missionary organizations provide spiritual guidance to people in need. We support the national churches in their charitable services by providing them with staff and funding. We serve all of those in need regardless of their religion. We treat all religions with respect.

Alliance Builder

CBM believes, with this year’s scope of disability in developing worlds, we cannot do it all alone.

As one of the leading organizations in the fight against blindness, CBM is proud to be a founding member and major supporter of Vision 2020: The Right to Sight, a global coalition committed to eliminating avoidable blindness by the year 2020. CBM was instrumental in Vision 2020's creation, and we continue to play an important leadership role in the ongoing management and direction of the program.

Our efforts to raise awareness throughout industrialized nations about blindness issues are proving to be successful. The WHO recently credited Vision 2020 with the dramatic decrease in the world's blindness cases from 45 million to 37 million over the past ten years. CBM is also a pioneer in cooperating with other NGOs to build strategic alliances, designed to reach more people in more efficient ways.

Transforming Communities

For over 100 years, CBM's community-based programs and projects have touched the lives of millions of families throughout the world. Our approach allows us to make long-term investments in communities throughout the developing world and provide sustainable prevention and treatment solutions to people with disabilities.

Through our community-based activities we can prevent many disabilities from ever occurring, saving unnecessary costs and suffering. When a treatment option exists, we make available appropriate medications, surgeries and therapies. For those permanently disabled, we provide community-based rehabilitation that nurtures social relationships and enables the individual to live as part of the community. Our educational services teach literacy and equip people with hearing impairments, blindness, low vision, and mental disabilities with the tools necessary to support both themselves and their families.

CBM's community-based approach positions our staff of medical and business professionals to understand and overcome the barriers that keep the disabled from the rehabilitative resources they so desperately need. CBM involves the disabled in our planning so that we understand and can address the obstacles they face when seeking rehabilitation such as lack of transportation, inability to pay for services, and fear of hospitals. We have created programs that focus not just on a one-time surgery, but on long-term rehabilitation needs understanding that the disabled require sustained care, not quick fix treatments.

The strength of our partnerships with over 700 local organizations enables CBM to build the core capabilities of communities by developing local infrastructure and much needed human resources so communities can sustain the programs we initiate. We provide advice and direction to our partners on such critical issues as program administration, finance management, and local fundraising. We also work with local medical professionals to increase their skills and capacity to care for the disabled.

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