Penelope Price
Penelope Price is currently Chair of the RI Education Commission. She completed degrees in Psychology, Anthropology, and Special Education. She has worked her entire career in some aspect of disability work.
After opening a small school for children with disabilities in a remote mining town near central Australia, she worked at the first research center on disability in Australia, at Queensland University and then moved to Macquarie University in Sydney. She was engaged in teacher education, training teachers to work in special and inclusive schools. She started community programs for young children with disabilities and their families, focusing on developing early communication skills, particularly for children with intellectual and developmental disabilities.
She worked in seven countries in the Pacific Islands for 3 years assisting local NGOs to establish programs for young children with disabilities. She also advocated to the government, to include children with disabilities in their national education programs.
In 2000 Penelope moved to Bangkok to work for UNESCAP in the Asian and Pacific Decade of Disabled Persons program. She was engaged in evaluating the achievements of the first Decade (1993-2002) and in designing the Biwako Millennium Framework for Action: towards an inclusive, Barrier-free, Rights-based society for Persons with disabilities in Asia and the Pacific (BMF), the blueprint to guide government action in the second Decade from 2003-2012. She has continued her involvement with the UNESCAP program and with the developments in disability in the Pacific region, with particular emphasis on inclusive education. She has worked with UNESCO AIMS UNIT in Bangkok to develop Guidelines for Including Children with Disabilities in School Systems and in the EFA Monitoring Process.