Founded on God's love

At the turn of the 20th century, a German pastor named Ernst Christoffel believed God was calling him to go to the country of Turkey to preach the Gospel to German expatriates. Instead, God opened his eyes to the children begging outside the church. God opened Pastor Christoffel’s heart to the special needs of children desperately struggling to survive disability and poverty. Children who had little, if any, reason to believe they were loved at all.

Pastor Christoffel made a choice to live God’s love among the forgotten children of Turkey. In 1908, he opened a home for children who were blind. His open door and heart extended to abandoned children who couldn’t hear and those whose twisted legs kept them from walking. He couldn’t turn them away. They had nowhere else to go.

In our 100 years since then, we haven’t looked back from Pastor Christoffel’s call. Our goal is to reach, restore and empower a world of forgotten people who are among the least free, the least served, the most misunderstood and the poorest people in the world. Our goal is to enable them, showing them Jesus’ love, so they can be free… for life!

Our Core Values

Our core values dictate the way we behave and go about our mandate.

Christian
We strive to follow the teachings and example of Jesus Christ; we believe that our purpose can only be achieved through dependency on God.

International
We aspire to be a global organization in all aspects of our work.

Professional
We aim for quality in everything we do.

Integrity
We are good stewards of the resources entrusted to us.

Communication
We communicate honestly and respectfully.

Celebrating 100 years of sight and life!

Over our 100 years of life-transforming work, CBM has become a world expert in preventing and curing disability, and in training, equipping and empowering people who have permanent disabilities in low-income countries.

Here’s what we’ve accomplished – together with the gifts and prayers of people like you and together with God’s blessing.

• We’ve grown from one humble home for blind and otherwise disabled children in Turkey to more than 1,000 projects in over 100 countries, serving 18 million people last year alone.
• We’ve served more than 100 million people and families trapped in poverty by disability (more than 70 million people served since 2000).
• We’ve just performed our 8 millionth sight-restoring cataract surgery.
• Our orthopaedic surgeons and partners have performed 75,500 limb-straightening surgeries since 2003.
• More than 380,000 school kids have been educated, either at CBM special schools or integrated into regular schools, in the last 4 years.
• 18,000,000 moms, dads and children have had their sight saved through sight-protecting eye medications since 2003.
• We’ve distributed 14,000 hearing aids over the past 4 years alone. No other NGO is doing more for hearing-impaired people in low-income countries than CBM.

We've got a lot to celebrate! Yet, we've got a lot more to do!

… 500 million people in our world are still trapped in the desperate cycle of poverty and disability. The need is urgent. It’s a matter of human rights and dignity. And for millions of children, it’s a matter of life and death. We believe God is asking us to work together with you and other partners to meet this need.

Our Name

On the eve of our 100 year anniversary, we’ve taken stock of who we are, where we’ve been and where we’re going.

As we’ve considered the urgent needs among all disability groups in our world’s poorest countries… as we’ve seen the gaping cracks in medical care, education and employment provided to this largely forgotten group of people… and as we’ve felt God’s heavy and direct call to meet this need…

… it’s become clear that our name – Christian Blind Mission International – is no longer big enough. It’s doesn’t say enough about what we do.

So we’ve shortened our name to “cbm”. It’s a name that acknowledges our rich history and our 100% commitment to saving and restoring sight, while allowing us to tell the world about the bigger need of people trapped in poverty and all different disabilities.

Our Mission

CBM Canada is motivated by God’s love to break the cycle of poverty and disability. We work together with Canadians, international partners and our clients to set people free for life.

…including people with,

Our New Brand

Together we can do more

Together…
 … means together with God, together with you, together with our local partners overseas, together with governments, together with our clients (those we serve)…

Together we can…
… is a determined and positive statement of ability – ability made possible in lives through the prevention of disability… through the cure of disability… and through the rehabilitation and empowerment of people with permanent disabilities. Together we can enable a world of people to live better, longer, freer lives.

Together we can do more!
… is an acknowledgement that we need to do more. 500 million people are already struggling to survive poverty and disability. 1.2 billion people live at heightened risk of disability because they’re living on less than $1/day. Moms, dads and children living with disability in poverty are being denied basic human rights. Children are dying.

We need to do more. And we can’t afford to wait.

Our Plan

To reach the half a billion people struggling to survive poverty and disability, we need to work harder and smarter and louder. Our goal is to break the cycle of poverty and disability and to rescue, restore and empower whole families, enabling them to live fully and freely.

Our plan for the next decade and beyond is built on four pillars.

Increasing Resources – We need more funds to help more people. In fact, our goal over the next five years is to double the number of people we help. That means doubling our income.

Enabling Partners – We work with more than 600 local partners – churches, government ministries, service clubs, missions… We believe that by sharing information and skills with our local partners, we can gain efficiencies and effectiveness, helping each dollar to go even further… enabling more families to live better, fuller, longer lives.

Advocacy and Global Alliances – We’ve spent 100 years becoming very good at direct service delivery. Now we need to combine direct service delivery with advocacy. We need to work together with governments, other NGOs and multi-national umbrella organizations so people with disabilities are included in all development programs.VISION 2020 – a program founded by CBM to eradicate avoidable blindness – is our proven model for advocacy and alliances.

Human Resource Development – We won’t reach as many people waiting for our help if we don’t underpin the whole plan with the best international team of medical, educational, administrative, communications experts possible.

 

I've seen the extraordinary need and know how vital cbm's ministry is. In my experience, cbm is a leader in impacting the lives of the poorest and most forgotten people in the world. They passionately want to help as many persons with disability as possible. - Archbishop Desmond Tutu.