Sabriye Tenberken
Co-Founder of Braille Without Borders (BWB), India
Sabriye Tenberken is the co-founder of Braille Without Borders (BWB) operating in Tibet and co-founder of the International Institute for Social Entrepreneurs (IISE) in India.
Born with a degenerative retinal disease, Ms Tenberken lost her sight at the age of twelve. She is a visionary who has brought literacy to the blind people of Tibet and transformed the perception of blindness.
She studied Tibetology at the Bonn University in Germany. During her studies she discovered there was no Braille script for the Tibetan language, so she created one. Determined to share this with the blind people of Tibet, She initiated the first school for the blind in the Tibet Autonomous Region.
Ms Tenberken is the author of My Path Leads to Tibet, a bestseller that has been translated in to 13 languages, and also The Seventh Year. She also starred in the award winning documentary Blindsight.
She has received many international awards and recognitions for her work including the 2011 INCITE Excellence in Social Entrepreneurship Award. In 2008 the Government of the People’s Republic of China named her “One of 15 most influential overseas experts over the past 30 years in China”.
In 2005 she was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize and also named a Young Global Leader at the World Economic Forum, Davos Switzerland.
