Professor William Alford ‘77, Na Kyung-won of South Korea, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and Timothy Shriver, chairman of Special Olympics
Professor William Alford ’77, who serves on the board of the International Special Olympics, met with U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in November to discuss disability issues. Last year, a major new study, “World Report on Disability,” published by the World Health Organization and the World Bank, put the number of people with disabilities at 15 percent of the world’s population. Alford said the goals of the meeting were to bring more attention to disability issues and to underscore ways in which the Special Olympics’ work lines up with the secretary- general’s focus—in particular the U.N. Millennium Development Goals, which include eradicating extreme poverty. Alford is a co-founder, with Michael Stein ’88, of the HLS Project on Disability.