Financial woes have put the future of World Services for the Blind in Little Rock into question, leaving its clients and employees in limbo. It will close its doors for the holidays Friday with no real assurance that the center will ever reopen, its new leader said Tuesday.
President and Chief Executive Officer Stacy Hunter Schwartz said the organization's 35 clients, who stay on campus at the agency's headquarters off Fair Park Boulevard, were told to take all of their belongings home for the Christmas and New Year's break.
World Services for the Blind is a nationally accredited adult rehabilitation center that provides a college preparatory program, vision rehabilitation, nine vocational courses, an assisted technology learning center, job-placement assistance and a personal adjustment program.
Clients were scheduled to return to campus Jan. 25, but now Schwartz isn't sure whether the training and rehabilitation center will reopen. Schwartz, who was hired as the organization's CEO last month, said she and the agency's administrative staff are desperately searching for donors and a smaller campus.
"It's become clear to me that we are in a pretty dire financial state," she said. "I don't want to be left in a situation where we have 35 clients here who are blind and visually impaired and we don't have power or plumbing."
Since the clients had already planned to leave for the holidays, it was the best transition, Schwartz said.
"We will let them know when and if we can reopen. We're hoping to get an infusion of donations that will let us reopen. An alternate plan is to move to a location which is less expensive for us to operate. We are talking with churches and other organizations that might be able to take us in."
About 40 jobs also are uncertain at this point, Schwartz said. And World Services for the Blind is the only facility in the world that offers an Internal Revenue Service vocational program that fast-tracks graduates to guaranteed jobs with the IRS.
"It would be tragic to lose that," Schwartz said.
In 2005, the nonprofit organization, then known as Lion's World Services for the Blind, announced ambitious plans to build a $30 million headquarters downtown near the Clinton Presidential Center and Heifer International. It spent $3.9 million purchasing about 10 acres.
By the expected groundbreaking for the headquarters in 2010, fundraising efforts had fallen short. At that point, the organization was still working on raising the first $5 million of the fundraising goal. World Services abandoned plans to build the new headquarters and put the property back on the market.
At the time, just 45 beds at the 90-bed campus on Fair Park Boulevard were filled, and the center's president, Larry Dickerson, shifted efforts to focus on increasing enrollment.
Despite his efforts, enrollment steadily decreased. Now the campus serves just about a third of its 91-client occupancy.
Typically, about 85 percent of the school's clients are from out of the state, Schwartz said. After the recession, several states stopped paying to send blind people to out-of-state facilities, making it even harder for World Services to keep up enrollment.
"We have been running in the red for some years," Schwartz said. "When the organization was founded in 1947, it was the first of its kind. As competition has grown ... more people are able to receive services in their own state and not come here. In that sense, the need has decreased. I don't think there's a need for 91 clients here in Little Rock."
The agency has been working to maintain a campus that it can't fill and that also has maintenance problems. Parts of the complex date back to the 1950s.
Meanwhile, the vacant downtown property also costs money to maintain. It was in the running for the site of the Little Rock Technology Park and the site of the future Arkansas Veterans Home but was turned down both times.
World Services for the Blind heard just last week from an interested buyer, however.
"We're really hoping that deal goes through because that would definitely help," Schwartz said.
The organization laid off about 10 employees before Thanksgiving because of budgetary constraints. Now there's no certainty that the remaining 40 will be retained, Schwartz said.
If World Services moves to a smaller campus, "we'll have all hands on deck to help with the move," Schwartz said. But if it moves just its offices and clients are housed somewhere else off-site, then there won't be a need for the caregivers, meal providers or maintenance crew.
"We are trying to figure out which essential staff need to come in," she said.
The organization has served clients from the 50 states and 57 countries. The training center also has gotten international attention over the years. In 2010, a visitor from Saudi Arabia traveled to Little Rock with plans to model a training and rehabilitation in Saudi Arabia after World Services for the Blind.
City Director Dean Kumpuris sang the organization's praises when he accepted its Vision Award this year. He said Little Rock needed to know more about the great work it does.
The organization is financed solely through donations, the tuition paid by state rehabilitation agencies for the clients and through grants.
It's the only place in the nation to offer an IRS vocational program for the blind in which clients go through intense training. They have to be able to read Braille at a rapid rate, and the program uses technology that allows Braille to be read on a changing keyboard.
The program has run successfully for nearly half a century, Schwartz said, and its graduates are highly desirable.
"If you graduate, you are guaranteed a job with the IRS -- and not just low hourly rate jobs, but a career position where you might move into management," Schwartz said. "The IRS is very committed to hiring people with disabilities; they'd be very upset if we weren't able to continue this program."
Mauro Sanango, 27, completed the IRS vocational training this summer. He's from Connecticut and started a job with the IRS in Massachusetts this week.
After graduating from Northern Connecticut State University with a finance degree last year, Sanango said he started to give up hope of finding a job after dozens of applications and interviews didn't result in an offer.
It's difficult for people with disabilities get hired, he said. He found out about the World Services for the Blind program through his state.
"It wasn't just about having the training. They also tried to get us all to interact and become active in the community because, you know, a lot of time if you have a visual impairment you are locked indoors," Sanango said.
"For [World Services for the Blind] to maybe be closing doors, it shatters someone's dream and maybe the only opportunity they have left to find a stable job or have a shot at becoming independent financially," he said.
Schwartz said she'll be doing everything possible to seek donations to save World Services for the Blind from closing. She moved to Little Rock six months ago and took over the nonprofit a month ago to the day today.
"I've literally been stopping people on the street asking if they know of a place or have ideas. We're seeking organizations that have extra space of classrooms or offices and some kind of living arrangement for our clients," she said.
A section on 12/17/2014