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VisionSpring: Eye Care and COVID-19

Eye Care and COVID-19
Globally, more than 1 billion need eyeglasses but do not have them. VisionSpring is an organization that recognizes that the lack of access to eye care worldwide highlights the link between poverty and vision impairment. To improve the situation, VisionSpring provides eyeglasses for individuals who need them the most. Currently, the organization fights the lack of access to eye care in the world in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Seeing the Connection Between Poverty and Eye Care

Poor eye health and poverty link in a feedback loop. Poverty can worsen eye health due to lack of resources, and worsened eye health can cause or intensify poverty. For example, estimates have determined that vision impairments like cataracts and trachoma are more prevalent in impoverished communities due to missing clean water access and overcrowded environments. Once individuals become significantly vision-impaired or blind, they are not able to access beneficial opportunities as easily.

Subsequently, people with compromised eye health or eye disabilities are negatively affected in multiple aspects of their normal lives. This impacts a wide range, including employment, health, education, material wealth, social prosperity and access to aid. In summary, poor eye health lowers a person’s quality of life, especially if that person is or already was in poverty. Now more than ever, this issue draws attention as the quality of life worsens for those experiencing poverty due to inadequate eye care and COVID-19.

VisionSpring’s Intentions and Influence

VisionSpring’s mission is to provide eyeglasses to those who need them. Eyeglasses are instrumental in furthering social, economic, educational and personal advancement. Proper eyeglasses can correct about half of the world’s vision impairment problems. Supplying vision-challenged individuals with eyeglasses can boost their productivity up to 32%, which in turn can allow them to have greater opportunities for income.

Giving students the eyeglasses they need can increase their learning gains by up to one full additional year of school. VisionSpring aims to make these empowering changes in peoples’ lives. It specifically focuses on providing eyeglasses for people in new or growing markets, typically living on less than $4 a day. The organization does this through a mix of revenue, generated by “high-volume low-margin sales,” and philanthropic contributions.

For every $4-5 donation, VisionSpring can give one pair of glasses to someone struggling to see, which can then translate into an average 20% growth in their income. VisionSpring has screened millions of people for vision correction, including garment workers, students, drivers and more.

Over the years, the organization provided 6.8 million pairs of corrective eyeglasses in 24 countries. It has seen an increase in productivity between 22-32% among those receiving eyeglasses and witnessed $1.4 billion in economic influence. Despite all this momentum, however, VisionSpring’s global service slowed in 2020 due to the pandemic. It is now navigating the process of tackling eye care and COVID-19.

VisionSpring Through a COVID-19 Lens

Eye care and COVID-19 alleviation fit together under VisionSpring’s scope of action. Although it has scaled back efforts to provide eye care services in the midst of COVID-19, VisionSpring has ramped up its efforts to serve in other ways.

“Because our eye screening work intersects with community health workers, hospitals, government health ministries, supply chain providers, and the manufacturing sector, we have built in capabilities that have been helpful in the COVID-19 response,” said VisionSpring in a statement.

Accordingly, it established multiple “COVID-19 response goals.” These include obtaining and sending two million units of PPE, including goggles, face shields, gowns, masks and more, to health workers VisionSpring has an association with. Additionally, VisionSpring intends to provide 250,000 cloth masks to people and health centers in low income communities to curb the spread of COVID-19. It has employed and commissioned people it works closely with in the garment industry to make these masks.

VisionSpring also works to deliver 300,000 food and hygiene care kits to people who need them due to lockdowns. In particular, it has targeted transportation drivers, migrant workers and others with the kits and is working to implement handwashing stations outside health facilities in communities it is present in.

VisionSpring’s Impact During the Pandemic

As of December 2020, VisionSpring delivered over 2.1 million units of PPE, exceeded its cloth mask distribution goal by a factor of two and sent out about 304,000 kits to communities. At the same time, due to limitations, the organization scaled back its eye screening services because it lacked the ability to conduct them while social distancing.

VisionSpring CEO Ella Gudwin says VisionSpring plans to return to its full services with a priority on reading glasses due to current specializations and COVID-19 safety precautions. Through VisionSpring’s efforts, past, present and planned, it shows a commitment to the wellbeing of people and communities it serves. By working to maintain priorities and expand impact, VisionSpring strengthens both vision and economic capabilities for individuals, even in challenging times.

– Claire Kirchner
Photo: Flickr

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Child Vision: Glasses for Developing Countries

Glasses for developing countries
A variety of NGOs have been working for decades to provide glasses for developing countries. Most models for this operate in similar ways, either by donating glasses or offering low-cost glasses for communities to purchase. These programs have been successful in helping people correct their vision, as well as creating more education and economic opportunity. They only lack one thing — innovation. Choosing to apply a solution designed for a developed country to a remote village is not always the best option. This is where Child Vision comes in.

The Statistics

The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that nearly 80% of all persons in Africa have unaddressed vision impairment. Additionally, 33% of the world’s poor population suffers from vision impairment. There are 123.7 million people with a refractive error, which can be solved with glasses that have the correct strength. On average, glasses cost approximately $343, despite the average manufacturing cost of $10. Clear vision drastically reduced education access for children, which in turn created less economic opportunity as they moved into adulthood. Lack of clear vision loses $202 billion in global productivity each year.

The Standard

Some of the biggest names in glasses for developing countries are NGOs like Eyes on Africa, Vision for a Nation, VisionSpring and the WHO.

The WHO has been working on the Global Action Plan for eye health since 2014. The plan has one main objective — to encourage and enhance global eye health. The Global Action Plan has several initiatives. These include identifying what is causing vision impairment, understanding where the gap is in eye health access and bringing cataract surgery to developing countries. VisionSpring works by allowing those in developed countries to purchase glasses for developing countries through the VisionSpring website. VisionSpring donates those as well as letting communities purchase low-cost glasses. It also provides bulk purchase discounts and sell glasses individually and by the box. On average, one pair of bifocals in a box set costs just 85 cents. The price point is low, but still unmanageable for many villages, especially in areas with little to no internet access.

Child Vision

Child Vision is a program within the Centre for Vision in the Developing World (CVDW). The CVDW looked at the statistics of vision impairment then accepted the challenge of creating a solution that worked for the developing world. The main struggles the CVDW found in the traditional programs were a lack of optometrists and the high cost of traditional glasses. There is one optometrist per 1 million people in the population in developing nations. While 85 cents for a pair of glasses may seem affordable, it is a great financial strain for the world’s poor, many of whom survive on less than a dollar a day.

Child Vision, after identifying the root problems with getting glasses to developed countries, created a successful prototype within two months. The CVDW created an inexpensive, adjustable lens that sets into durable frames.

How the Glasses Work

The round lens is composed of two walls made of a flexible plastic membrane that the wearer fills with liquid silicone. The lens is then set into plastic frames that have dials on both temples of the glasses. The plastic frames are filled with the same liquid silicone that is in the lens. The wearer puts on the Child Vision glasses, covers one eye and using a tumbling “E” chart, adjusts a side knob to move more or less fluid into the lens until they can see clearly. They then repeat on the other side.

The wearer simply removes the knobs from the glasses and throws them away after the lens is set. They now have durable, functional, cost-effective glasses. With a $20 donation, CVDW can provide a pair of self-adjusting glasses to a developing country. A 1–2-hour training session with a local community leader to show them how to use the tumbling “E” charts to check vision and make sure the glasses are adjusted correctly is also provided. This is not only an immediate solution and innovation to provide glasses to developing countries but it creates generational empowerment of checking eyesight and promoting educational and economic growth within each community.

– Madalyn Wright
Photo: Flickr

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Visionspring Sees an End to Poverty in Developing Nations

VisionspringThe importance of manual labor in the global economy is a key component in the fight against poverty in developing nations.

The World Economic Forum foresees that, despite predictions of technological advances, employment in the manufacturing and agricultural sectors will continue to grow for years to come.

A New York-based social enterprise sees the solution clearly: to alleviate poverty in developing nations, we must first focus on elevating the labor force.

The World Health Organization estimates that 90 percent of the world’s visually impaired live in developing countries, while nearly 80 percent of visual impairments can be prevented or cured. Without affordable vision care services, an estimated 703 million people in developing countries suffer from visual impairment and lack access to eyeglasses.

These problems are compounded by the nature of labor-intensive manufacturing jobs in developing countries, such as textile, clothing and machine/computer assembly – which require clear eyesight. As a result, vision problems pose significant obstacles to workers, by either hindering their productivity or rendering them unemployable.

With these looming statistics and the understanding that “if you can’t see, you can’t work,” founders and optometrists Jordan Kassalow and Scott Berrie established Visionspring in 2001 with the aim of providing vision care and eyeglasses to combat poverty in developing nations.

Visionspring considers the lack of optic care in low-income areas a market failure, and intends to address poverty in developing nations by fundamentally restructuring the market for eyeglasses.

Visionspring relies on partnerships with local NGO’s and small businesses in over 40 countries. Local entrepreneurs are trained by Visionspring to operate satellite optical shops. The shops provide high-quality care, and sell glasses that cater to a variety of customer needs, including bifocals, single vision, and photocromic lenses.

Rather than providing donated eyeglasses, which are costly to ship and often damaged upon arrival, Visionspring supplies new pairs of glasses to its customers around the world, thus stimulating production and providing lenses to those who need them most.

A 2007 Impact Assessment performed by Visionspring measured the effect of providing reading glasses to those in the developing world. The study found that reading glasses have the potential to increase a worker’s productivity by 35 percent.

A follow-up study done by the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan reported a consequent increase in monthly income by 20 percent for those whose vision was corrected. The result is a higher disposable income for the world’s poor, and eventually elevation out of poverty.

By addressing a specific need and empowering local people to provide essential services to their communities, the Visionspring model is globally viable. In 2012, Visionspring celebrated its millionth pair of eyeglasses sold in the developing world.

Eye care continues to gain ground as an important topic in the global health arena. In 2013, the World Health Assembly approved an action plan for universal access to eye health, which aims for a 25% reduction of avoidable visual impairments by 2019.

Visionspring will play an integral role in the achievement of this goal, as it keeps its sights on addressing the needs of workers and alleviating poverty in developing nations.

– Laurel Klafehn

Photo: Flickr

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VisionSpring Provides Eyeglasses for the Poor

visionspringWith all the issues around the globe, the world’s lack of eyeglasses probably does not occur to some people. However, around 703 million people have a vision problem that requires the use of glasses—and few of these 703 million people ever get them.

VisionSpring, an organization that provides glasses to the poor, realizes that more than 90 percent of these people live in a developing country. It also realizes that simply providing a worker with reading glasses for a mere $4 can improve his or her wage by up to $108 dollars per year. For citizens of developing countries, this amount could change the quality of someone’s life.

Founder and chairman of VisionSpring, Jordan Kassalow says that the organization’s operations rely on the motto “See to Learn, See to Work, and See For Safety.” Giving a pair of glasses to a student can equate to advancing his or her education up to a year, and glasses prevent injuries on the road and on the job.

Every dollar donated to VisionSprings adds up to an economic impact of $23 dollars. The organization sends out “vision entrepreneurs” to asses a community’s vision and spread the word about the opportunities available to that community. They travel around the world to the most impoverished places to advocate for this cause. This is nice because that means the help is coming to those who need it instead of vice versa—for example, in India someone could lose up to $10 dollars traveling to purchase a $4 dollar pair of glasses.

After performing vision tests for customers and providing them with glasses, a person can see his or her work productivity increase by 35 percent. VisionSpring also aims to consider the cultural differences between these various locations to best suit that community’s needs. For example, the organization has come up with a special pair of clear glasses for UV protection that can still shield eyes from the sun but are not the traditionally dark-shaded sunglasses the Western world is accustomed to.

“As I placed the glasses on the boy’s nose, I watched as the blank stare of a blind person transformed into an expression of unadulterated joy—I was witnessing someone seeing his world for the first time,” recounts Kassalow after giving one of his first pair of glasses to a seven-year-old boy in Mexico. VisionSprings considers a little-known issue that can bring big results—not only higher literacy and productivity rates but simply joy.

– Melissa Binns

Sources: The Christian Science Monitor, Forbes, VisionSpring
Photo: Boston Big Picture

VisionSpring Providing Eyeglasses for the Poor

Glasses
With all the issues around the globe, the world’s lack of eyeglasses probably does not occur to some people. However, around 703 million people have a vision problem that requires the use of glasses—and few of these 703 million people ever get them.

VisionSpring, an organization that provides glasses to the poor, realizes that more than 90 percent of these people live in a developing country. They also realize that simply providing a worker with reading glasses for a mere four dollars can improve their wage by up to $108 dollars per year. For citizens of developing countries, this amount could change the quality of someone’s life.

Founder and chairman of VisionSpring, Jordan Kassalow, says that the organization’s operations rely on the motto “See to Learn, See to Work, and See For Safety.” Giving a pair of glasses to a student can equate to advancing their education up to a year, and glasses prevent injuries on the road and on the job.

Every dollar donated to VisionSprings adds up to an economic impact of 23 dollars.  The organization sends out “vision entrepreneurs” to asses a community’s vision and spread the word about the opportunities available to that community. They travel around the world to the most impoverished places to advocate for this cause. This is nice because that means the help is coming to those who need it instead of vice versa—for example, in India someone could lose up to ten dollars traveling to purchase a four dollar pair of glasses.

After performing vision tests for customers and providing them with glasses, a person can see their work productivity increase by 35 percent. VisionSpring also aims to consider the cultural differences between these various locations to best suit that community’s needs. For example, the organization has come up with a special pair of clear glasses for UV protection that can still shield eyes from the sun, but are not the traditionally dark-shaded sunglasses the Western world is accustomed to.

“As I placed the glasses on the boy’s nose, I watched as the blank stare of a blind person transformed into an expression of unadulterated joy—I was witnessing someone seeing his world for the first time,” recounts Kassalow after giving one of his first pair of glasses to a 7-year-old boy in Mexico. VisionSprings considers a little-known issue that can bring big results—not only higher literacy and productivity rates, but simply joy.

– Melissa Binns

Sources: The Christian Science Monitor, Forbes, VisionSpring
Photo: Flickr