Many young girls in rural Zambia are not as fortunate. Every day, these girls have to worry about how long it will take to fetch clean water for their families, whether they can make the trip in time to go to school – and how they can stay safe from animal predators during a trek that can be several kilometers long!

In the Southern Province of Zambia in the Sinazongwe district, there’s no easy access to clean water. Although sparsely populated, many villages are situated in the mountainous part of the district that receives very little rainfall each year.

In the past, the communities were only able to obtain drinking water from shallow wells, dug in the banks of perennial river beds. Some of the villages are near freshwater Lake Kariba – but that lake is also infested with hungry crocodiles! Certainly not an ideal situation.

Until recently, if a community couldn’t afford to pay to drill their own borehole, they were forced to share their limited water supply with livestock. Proximity to the cattle and goats also brought flies, which led to the spread of sickness and disease like blinding trachoma.

In areas where water is scarce, it’s usually women and girls who are responsible for fetching water. This often involves long, exhausting walks to and from the water source – usually with the very real danger of being attacked by wild animals. In the Sinazongwe district, it was so dangerous that not a week would go by without hearing of a life lost due to animal predators! It meant girls either missed a lot of school or weren’t enrolled at all.

I’m sure many girls thought that they’d never be able to improve their futures. But thankfully, we have amazing donors who are committed to changing this situation. Because of the incredible generosity of people like you, 96 water boreholes to date have been drilled in the district!

Operation Eyesight’s well programs are so much more than simply drilling a hole in the ground. Establishing each well program includes:

• identifying a viable location;
• drilling the borehole;
• analyzing the water quality;
• training and equipping local villagers as pump minders;
• monitoring and evaluating the program;
• mobilizing the community and building the capacity of the village water committee;
• distributing antibiotics to fight the blinding eye disease, trachoma; and
• educating the community on eye health and general health.

Having ready access to clean potable (drinkable) water provides families with enough water that they can spare some for washing hands and faces – and this improved hygiene, in turn, helps prevent disease. And being closer to water also helps free up enough time from their household duties for girls to attend school.

Today, many more girls in the district are attending classes safely and on time. They go to school with plastic containers so they can carry water home from the borehole when their classes end. They know going to school means they can learn to read and write, which will improve their chances for a better life someday.

The girls at Nyanga school in Sinazongwe are especially grateful and excited to continue their studies. “We are still in the primary school, and we look forward to continuing with our education to become teachers or nurses so we can also help our people in this district.”

And all this progress was made possible by generous people just like you. Thank you!

You can help give more girls the chance to live their childhood, to follow their dreams and build a future for themselves. Help provide them with clean water – give a donation and support our water programs today!

The post Fresh water can restore girls’ futures! appeared first on Operation Eyesight.

Q. Since the 1960s, Operation Eyesight has been evolving its approach to eye care. Can you tell us what the main difference in approach is when tackling the problem from a charity perspective and now from a development perspective?

A. In the early 1960s, the emphasis of all eyesight-related international non-governmental organizations (INGOs) was on the large backlog of cataract cases in India and other developing nations. We began by funding screening camps, cataract surgeries and training aimed at reducing the backlog. Over time, we transitioned from a charity or aid model to a development model.

Rather than simply finding Band-Aid® solutions to temporarily alleviate health issues, we invest in sustainable treatment, prevention and community development activities to address specific eye health problems, as well as the root causes of blindness. Not only do we restore eyesight, but we work to prevent people from going blind in the first place – and we do this by working collaboratively with our local partners.

Q. Most of the organization’s work is occurring in India and Africa. Have you seen that blindness is occurring in the same fashion in both regions, or are the causes and cases you see based on geographical location? 

A. The common causes of avoidable blindness, such as cataract, refractive error, glaucoma and diabetic retinopathy, occur in all the countries in which we work: India, Ghana, Kenya and Zambia. However, we are also working to eliminate trachoma, a blinding eye disease, in Kenya and Zambia. Trachoma is no longer a problem in India and Ghana.

If you look at the root causes of avoidable blindness – poverty, illiteracy, lack of eye health knowledge and inadequate eye care facilities – there isn’t much difference between India and countries in Africa. The major difference that we see between the two is that in Africa it is the public health systems that deliver the majority of the eye care services, whereas in India the eye health sector is dominated by INGOs embedded in an overall supportive public health policy framework.

Q. What does development mean to Operation Eyesight? How does the organization’s model promote a sustainable approach to ending avoidable blindness?

A. To us, development means empowering our target communities and our local hospital partners so that ownership of the problem of avoidable blindness and the solutions to the problem lie with them. It is they who eliminate avoidable blindness on a sustainable basis with Operation Eyesight’s support for capacity-building and infrastructure development. We support local solutions by local people. We work collaboratively with each of our partners to set objectives and develop a practical plan that will ultimately achieve quality, sustainable eye care services.

On the other hand, the goal of eliminating avoidable blindness isn’t going to happen until every country has a health care system that includes eye care – a system they can sustain without foreign support. And that is exactly what our organization is working toward through our policy research and advocacy efforts.

Our vision is, “For all the world to see.” We recognize that isn’t going to happen overnight, but through the implementation of our quality, sustainable community development model, we are demonstrating that we have solutions to eye health problems. We have the answers. The elimination of avoidable blindness is possible!

The post We have the answers appeared first on Operation Eyesight.

When one of the world’s most active and generous philanthropists stresses the importance of evaluation, people sit up and pay attention.

Earlier this week on the Gates Foundation website, Bill Gates focussed his 2013 annual letter on “Measuring Progress.” He wrote, “In the past year, I have been struck by how important measurement is to improving the human condition. You can achieve incredible progress if you set a clear goal and find a measure that will drive progress toward that goal….”

This topic really encouraged us. Measurement happens to be a fundamental element of Operation Eyesight’s philosophy.

We too believe that providing health care in developing countries shouldn’t mean settling for substandard care. Since our beginning in 1963, our international development organization has had a long history of providing “the best for the poorest” in the countries where we work; and today, our eye care models meet or exceed World Health Organization (WHO) standards and benchmarks.

To use some of Gates’ words, “… setting clear goals, choosing an approach, measuring results, and then using those measurements to continually refine our approach…” has helped Operation Eyesight develop models and services appropriate for all the countries where we work. In India, our Hospital-Based Community Eye Health programs are a stellar example of this, as is our SAFE strategy implementation in Africa.

We also make sure our results don’t end with our own programs. Operation Eyesight nurtures strong partnerships with hospitals and NGOs that have a reputation for leadership. All our partners must agree to use international health and surgical protocols with an objective to achieving international standards in results. Such measurements are critical to developing eye care that is comprehensive, sustainable and accessible to all.

As Gates notes, “[O]ne of the greatest benefits of measurement [is] the ability it gives government leaders to make comparisons across countries and then learn from the best.” We work closely with governments and systems within our countries of intervention, so that our models can be emulated, supported and potentially sustained within government infrastructure.

It all boils down to working ourselves out of business; when we feel our work in a country or project is complete, we move on to another area of greatest need. Today, as we celebrate 50 years of operations, we are seeing the benefits of our commitment to evaluation in our programs.

Operation Eyesight is confident that our successful models of comprehensive, quality eye services will provide the answer to the age-old tragedy of avoidable blindness.

We’d like to thank Mr. Gates for focusing attention on the important topic of evaluation. We look forward to more of his insights in the future!

The post Gates Foundation reinforces importance of evaluation appeared first on Operation Eyesight.

Here are five highlights to check out:

1. How longtime donor Don McIver has helped strangers see avoidable blindness differently for over 30 years.
2. Why a blind Kenyan grandmother finally decided to have cataract surgery. Was her operation a success? Watch our photo essay to find out!
3. How generous Canadian donors made a huge contribution to a new eye hospital in Ghana (read part 1 and part 2 here).
4. Why being a grandparent helps you SEE the world differently.
5. How a blind Indian child found some hope and dignity.

We have many more heartwarming stories and great photos to share with you in the coming year, so please check back each week. Thank you for your support!

The post 5 stories that touched our hearts in 2012 appeared first on Operation Eyesight.