North Grenville, well-known for its generosity and compassion, has had a local business recognised for a particularly successful fund raising campaign to help others in need. Local optometrist, Dr. Carla Eamon, has been acknowledged by Optometry Giving Sight as a Gold award level fundraiser, thanks to her efforts during the 2016 World Sight Day Challenge.
This money will be used to support sustainable eye care projects in under-served communities around the world, helping people who are needlessly blind or vision impaired and in urgent need of eye care.
“We are delighted to have received a Gold award,” said Dr. Eamon. “I have supported Optometry Giving Sight for eleven years and am proud to donate to such a worthwhile cause. The World Sight Day Challenge is a great way to help support the millions of people who don’t have access to the basic eye care that we can take for granted.”
Optometry Giving Sight is committed to supporting programs focusing on training local eye care professionals, so that people in need will have access to sustainable eye care from within their own community. The organisation has funded 97 projects in 39 countries since 2007, and these projects have helped to provide basic eye care services to over 7.6 million people, support the establishment of 133 vision centres, and train more than 14,000 eye care personnel. This includes funding support to nine Schools or Colleges of Optometry, where 782 students are currently enrolled. 383 students have already graduated, with the potential to see 766,000 patients per year.
Optometry Giving Sight is a joint initiative of the World Council of Optometry, the Brien Holden Vision Institute and the International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness. World Sight Day is an initiative of VISION 2020: The Right to Sight and is supported by the World Health Organization (WHO); the International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness, and non-government organizations, with the shared goal of eliminating avoidable blindness by the year 2020, in order to give all people in the world the right to sight.
Donations of $50 can help provide a study kit to an optometry student; $100 can help provide 20 people with access to an eye exam and glasses. $300 can help to provide a child size trial frame, while $1200 can help provide vision screenings to children at 12 schools.
Optometrists are invited to participate by donating their eye exam fees from World Sight Day, making a personal, or practice donation, or by donating $2 – $5 from every eye exam given or glasses sold in October. They can also support by planning a practice celebration and inviting patient donations over the month.
For more information about Optometry Giving Sight, visit www.givingsight.org.
