Vineela joined our family in August 2018, after working for two years as a clinical optometrist at the L V Prasad Eye Institute. “My time there motivated me to join an organization that provides quality care for the people who need it most,” she says.

Vineela’s day at the office begins at 9:30 a.m. She starts by going through her weekly plans, preparing her to-do list and tackling her most urgent tasks. These often include following up on the progress of our partner hospitals and coordinating training for vision technicians, optometrists and ophthalmic assistants. Lunch is at 1 p.m., after which she’s busy with project and training reports. She wraps up at 5:30 p.m. with a final report to her manager and discussion about tomorrow’s important tasks.

But that’s not all. With her expertise in clinical optometry, Vineela trains optometrists, technicians and final-year optometry students, visiting one or two of our partner hospitals every month.

During these trips, she also monitors our Hospital-Based Community Eye Health Projects. She visits vision centres, talks with the staff and patients, checks patient records and addresses any areas for improvement. “I get to see the changes we bring into people’s lives. That’s what I like about my job the most!” says Vineela.

“My interests are in clinics and teaching,” she continues. “Operation Eyesight’s unique approach in reaching the underprivileged motivated me to apply for this position. Now I am very happy to be a part of this family and to serve the neediest!”

Your big-hearted gifts are making it possible to transform communities through people like Vineela. By donating today, you can help provide vulnerable communities in Africa and Asia with the quality eye care they need – For All The World To See!

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Targeting eye health alone isn’t enough to eliminate avoidable blindness; if other health care needs aren’t met, there will still be people suffering from vision problems or other conditions. For example, vitamin A deficiency results in preventable childhood blindness, and increases the risk of death from common childhood illnesses such as diarrhea.

With your help, we’re enabling poor communities to lead healthier and more productive lives. Not only do we educate target communities about eye health, but we also address their essential health care needs. Our trained community health workers educate communities about eye health and general health (such as the importance of vitamin A) and create awareness of the eye care services available in or around the community. They also collaborate with health care staff to deliver services such as immunizations.

We’re always proud to report the number of sight-restoring cataract surgeries performed or prescription eyeglasses dispensed, but the pinnacle of our work is the healthy communities that are empowered to lead happy and productive lives. For example, we’ve declared 1,020 villages as avoidable blindness-free. In these villages, mortality rates have dropped significantly and school enrollment rates have increased.

Thanks to YOU, entire communities have been transformed!

There are still thousands of communities that need your help! Please donate today to prevent blindness and restore sight to some of the most vulnerable people in Africa and Asia.

The post With healthy eyes, entire communities are thriving because of YOU! appeared first on Operation Eyesight.

We’re thrilled to have been named one of the Top 10 Impact Charities of 2018 by Charity Intelligence Canada. Just as for-profit organizations have an obligation to their shareholders, we have an obligation to our donors. We invest donor funds carefully and efficiently to create the long-term changes that will help eliminate avoidable blindness.

This recognition is a significant milestone on our shared path to help more people who are needlessly suffering, and to make a generational impact that will ensure the communities we work in will have access to the eye care they need today, tomorrow and in the future.

Charity Intelligence’s impact rating is determined by analyzing the measurable return for every dollar donated. They hold charities accountable for the support they receive from Canadian donors, and they observe that people will generally give more to charities when they are confident their donation will make an impact. Operation Eyesight made the list by eliminating avoidable blindness at the community level, through our Hospital-Based Community Eye Health Program model.

When assessing our impact, we look at how well we are meeting our strategic goals. We look at the number of patients treated, how much local capacity is being built and how well our hospital partners are progressing towards operational sustainability.

We create eye health-seeking behaviour in the communities we work in through outreach and education programs, and we empower communities to take responsibility for their eye health needs. This plays a vital role in helping to ensure our projects are sustainable and that people will continue to seek help even after our formal partnership with the hospital has ended.

The ripple effect is incredible! Kids can see to read and go to school, giving them the opportunity to get an education and later find a job and provide for themselves. Parents can return to work and provide for their families. Grandparents can watch their grandkids grow up, and their grandkids don’t need to stay home to care for them. This way, children can get an education and thrive in the future. Entire communities are transformed with the gift of sight!

We can’t thank our donors enough for supporting our sight-saving program model. Thanks to people like you, we’ve declared over 1,000 villages avoidable blindness-free in India and Nepal. And we’re not done yet! We’ve had great success in the communities we work in, but there are still millions of people who need our help. With your help, we can reach them – For All The World To See!

 Click here to donate and make an IMPACT.

The post We’re one of the Top 10 Impact Charities of 2018! appeared first on Operation Eyesight.

Declaring villages avoidable blindness-free is the pinnacle of our work. We’re ecstatic to say that we declared our 500th village free of avoidable blindness in 2017.

With the help of our partner Gerald A. Cooper-Key Foundation we declared 11 of those villages avoidable blindness-free. In fact, the Director General of Health Services of the Indian government recognized our work in reaching remote areas.

Gerald A. Cooper-Key Foundation also supported more than 500 eye surgeries.

Successful partnerships contribute to our accomplishments. Standard Chartered Bank’s Seeing is Believing supported us in establishing 12 new Vision Centres. With their help we passed another landmark when we opened our 100th Vision Centre. We’re delighted to report that by the end of the year we’d opened 108 Vision Centres.

We’re also grateful for the continued support from Bharat Financial Inclusion. Thanks to their generosity we performed more than 5,000 cataract surgeries in eight Indian states.

On the technology front, our partnership with Pellucid Inc, a Singapore based eye tech firm, is thriving. With Pellucid technology:

• 60 Vision Centres are reporting online.
• 30 tablets are using a tracking application to cover household surveys for 750,000 people.

We continue to be recognized as eye health care experts. Last year Operation Eyesight’s Dr. Santosh Moses, Regional Manager for South Asia was elected Vice President to the Executive Committee of VISION 2020 India. Also, Operation Eyesight was nominated to the Universal Eye Health Committee of the Government of Odisha.

And for fun, our Indian team marathoners ran in the Airtel Hyderabad Marathon. Raising an impressive $11,000, Operation Eyesight was recognized as an official charity for the marathon. The fun’raising was the easy part and our team did the hard part — running distances ranging between 10 and 42.2 km. Remarkable!

In addition, we expanded our Community-Based Diabetic Retinopathy project to two new cities last year — Udgir, Maharashtra and Udaipur, Rajasthan.

Thanks to our amazing donors India had a dynamic year!

Thanks to Gerald A. Cooper-Key Foundation and the Koehle Family Trust, these Vision Centres are permanent facilities. Each Vision Centre is now financially self-sustaining and provides eye care services in areas where none existed. Also, with Gerald A. Cooper-Key Foundation support, we’re proud to announce the inauguration of the upgraded out-patient department at Fateh-Bal Eye Hospital last year.

We’re just getting started in Nepal, and our future in the country promises to give new-found hope and freedom to thousands of people.

We couldn’t do it without our loyal donors. Thank you!

Our momentum continues in Nepal as we move into our second year working in the county. With great support from our donors and partners, we trained 14 new eye health care staff. Working with Nepal Eye Hospital and Fateh-Bal Eye Hospital we established three new Vision Centres linked to these hospitals.

Thank you for making 2017 another fantastic year!

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