Eyecare Kids has chosen Optometry Giving Sight as our charity. 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. Please read below for more information about the amazing work that 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.
