Every man, woman and child deserve a comprehensive eye exam.
But millions don’t have access to a basic eye exam—and the spectacles they need.
Eyecare Plus and Eyecare Kids have chosen Optometry Giving Sight as our charity of choice. Instead of charging for a spectacle adjustment or repair, we ask for a small donation with the knowledge that it could make a big difference in someone’s life. We also have a ready supply of sweets in return for a coin donation at our practices.
Optometry Giving Sight—the Amazing Work They Do
Optometry Giving Sight was established in 2003 to address the needs of the more than 670 million men, women and children around the world who are blind or visually impaired simply because they don’t have access to an eye exam and a pair of glasses. Why? Because in some countries there are not enough trained eye care personnel, and there is no infrastructure to support these desperately needed eye care services.
Optometry Giving Sight is a global fundraising organisation reaching out to the more than 200,000 optometrists around the world and their nearly 325 million patients to help fund the solution.
Optometry Giving Sight funds programs that offer not only eye exams and glasses in countries with little or no access to them, but that establish the infrastructure and train the local human resources required for sustainable, quality vision care.
At the end of 2011, Optometry Giving Sight will have allocated close to $5.2 million to projects that will give sight to people with refractive error blindness and impaired vision in Africa, Asia, Latin America and Indigenous Australia. The funds have been raised by optometrists, their staff, patients, and optometric students in Australia, the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Singapore and Norway.
Optometry Giving Sight is a joint initiative of the World Optometry Foundation (WOF), the International Centre for Eyecare Education (ICEE) and the International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness (IAPB) and supports the goals of VISION 2020: The Right to Sight, an initiative of IAPB and the World Health Organization (WHO). VISION 2020 aims to eliminate preventable blindness by the year 2020, in order to give all people in the world the right to sight.
Optometrist Dr Ali Khalife and his team are just some of our staff who support Optometry Giving Sight. Ali states, ‘Our team at Eyecare Plus Bankstown donate to Optometry Giving Sight as they are the only organisation we know of that aims to prevent blindness and vision impairment in impoverished regions across the world by just simply providing eye exams and glasses. They make a huge difference in people’s lives just by giving them back the sense of sight, which we take for granted.’
A great reminder to always be thankful for the gift of sight and to help bring that gift to the areas less reached.