Founder

Bob Baillie, founder of MIRA FOUNDATION USA, INC. was a sighted individual until an everyday surgery resulted in his blindness, an event that completely changed his life. Enveloped in total darkness and coping with the certainty of being unable to regain his sight, his world brightened appreciatively when a friend told him the story of his daughter’s experience with a guide dog and how the dog had such a positive impact on her life.

Bob did his research and learned about the Orientation and Mobility cane skills that he would need to have in order to become a guide dog recipient and he then set out to develop those skills and become as proficient as possible as quickly as possible. As soon as his skill set reached the level required to work with a guide dog, he made arrangements to attend a 30-day guide dog training program where he ultimately met his beautiful Bernese Mountain Guide Dog, Devon.

Even before Bob received Devon, in fact as soon as he became aware of guide dogs and the significant, positive changes they make in a blind person’s life, he immediately decided that he wanted to create a foundation that could provide guide dogs free of charge to other visually impaired individuals and that he wanted the foundation to concentrate primarily on providing guide dogs to children. So MIRA FOUNDATION USA, INC. was born and rather than saying “and the rest is history”, we like to say instead that we are history in the making. The foundation is working hard to raise the funds that will enable us to give to others the confidence and independence that only guide dogs provide. We sincerely hope that you will want to share in our mission and to participate in shaping our history by helping us give other visually impaired individuals the opportunity to have guide dogs of their own.