At 32, Stephen is the proud father to four children in Narok County, Kenya. But providing for his family has been challenging for the young dad. Since high school, he’s been struggling with painful, tearing and itchy eyes.
Stephen started out raising livestock but found it difficult to make ends meet. He then tried more lucrative work as a motorcycle taxi driver and courier, but his poor eyesight combined with the dusty country roads made the job too dangerous for him.
Eventually, Stephen visited a private hospital where he was diagnosed with trachoma, an infectious eye disease that causes the eyelid to turn inward. As a result of the disease, the eyelashes rub against the eye, causing intense pain, scarring of the cornea and, if left untreated, blindness.
Stephen received a pair of eyeglasses at the hospital and was sent on his way, but he found that the glasses only made things worse. By this point, his right eyelid was so swollen that it was starting to obscure his vision and caused his eye to tear up constantly.
Stephen went to another hospital, where he learned that he needed surgery to treat the trachoma infection in his right eye. With help from his family, Stephen raised the money he needed and got the procedure done. But there was no improvement to his eyesight, and before long, the trachoma infection had returned.
Many villagers are happy about this project because it has literally opened their eyes.”
With remarkable doggedness, Stephen went to a third hospital. Again, he underwent surgery. And again, his condition didn’t improve.
After that, Stephen nearly gave up. But then something happened to reignite hope. He finally crossed paths with Operation Eyesight.
In October, Stephen heard that there would be free eye camp for trachoma patients at the Ntulele Health Centre on World Sight Day, which falls on the 12th of the month. He visited the centre to learn more, and a surgeon examined him and recommended another operation. Stephen recounted his previous experiences, but the surgeon reassured him that they could improve his condition.
Stephen returned to the health centre later in October, and along with many others, underwent his third procedure. Thanks to the generous support of our donors, Stephen got the surgery done free of charge. After the bandages came off, he was filled with joy and relief. His vision was unobscured once again. His right eyelid had been surgically rotated back into place, and his cornea had been spared of any scarring.
“Now I can get back to my motorcycle business,” he says, “just like the other young men from my village.”
Stephen adds that he is grateful for the work Operation Eyesight is doing in his village through the eye health outreach programs.
“Many villagers are happy about this project because it has literally opened their eyes,” he says. “A lot of people had eye problems, but now they have been treated.”
As well as resuming his work to support his family, Stephen is also acting as an eye health ambassador in his village. When community health workers who work in the village encounter a patient who is nervous about getting surgery for their trachoma, they call on Stephen to share his experience.
With files from Eunice Mwihaki Murigi.
Operation Eyesight Universal has been running programs in Ethiopia since 2018. Late last year, our Director of International Programs Yashwant Sinha travelled to the east African country to check in on our programming. We sat down with him for an update and to learn more about our partnership with Edmonton-based Partners in Education Ethiopia.
They are scattered across one region called Amhara in northern Ethiopia, and the span of the project is about 200 kilometres.
One is a community eye health program, and the other is a WASH-related project, which means water, sanitation and hygiene.
With this particular project, we are working with an international NGO called Partners in Education Ethiopia, which works in the education sector by mobilizing the community and building a school with its support. The goal of the partnership is to improve quality of life of students and staff of the schools, their families and other members of nearby communities through addressing visual impairment.
Under the community eye health program, we train community health workers, who are government employees, in primary eye care and in the implementation of community eye health activities. They go door to door, identify people with eye conditions and refer them to one of our vision centres. At the vision centre they get a comprehensive eye exam by a well-trained optometrist. If they are found to have refractive error, they are prescribed eyeglasses, and if they need any surgical intervention or further diagnosis, they’re referred to the base hospital.
Further, these community health workers raise awareness about eye health with the help of behaviour change communication materials. All these interventions lead to the empowerment of the communities to take care of their eye health care needs, and once that is achieved, we declare the village or community as avoidable blindness-free.
Our hospital partners are the ophthalmic department of Tibebe Ghion Specialized Hospital, Injibara Secondary Hospital, Addis Alem Hospital, Durbetie Hospital and Debrework Hospital.
Yes, we are also training teachers to screen students and identify those who have refractive errors or any kind of eye conditions requiring treatment. Similar to our door-to-door screening program, students identified with eye conditions are referred on to the vision centre for a comprehensive screening, treatment and further referrals.
What we are trying to do is to help the schools and the communities access clean water. You may know that the Blue Nile River originates in Ethiopia from Lake Tana in Bahir Dar, in Amhara. But there is a shortage of clean water in the areas where we are intervening, so people have to struggle and go a long distance to fetch clean water. Sometimes it may be around 10-12 kilometres. They are dependent on seasonal wells and springs. And most of the time, the water is not very clean.
With the support of the Peter Gilgan Foundation, we received funding to provide clean water in three different communities and to support teenage girls by providing them a private place for their menstrual needs. We are also working with the school health clubs in all those schools, and we are educating them about face cleaning, personal hygiene and sanitation.
We work with water and sanitation to reduce the burden of trachoma, an eye infection that leads to vision loss and even blindness if left untreated. How high are trachoma rates in the area?
In the area where we work, the trachoma rate ranges from 5.5 to 20 per cent, so it’s not uniform across the region. The trachoma rate has been reduced a little bit, but it is still a public health issue.
What are some of the challenges of working in this area?
We have a committed team in our project areas that includes community health workers. They are part of the public health system and are responsible for implementing many government programs and projects on top of Operation Eyesight’s community eye health project activities, like door-to-door surveys, health education and awareness sessions. This creates heavy workload on the community health workers and often results in a delay of our projects.
The second is the high cost associated in provisioning clean water to the communities. The price of drilling a borehole in Ethiopia is nearly three times higher than in Zambia. One reason is that the ground water table has gone down, so you need to dig deeper. The second is that you don’t find as many private drilling companies, so it can be harder to find a competitive rate.
Last but not least, the country is currently facing high inflation. Fortunately, there has been little impact on recent projects as we are importing the equipment needed for establishing new vision centres. However, the cost of living for people in the project area has gone up.
Were there any memorable moments from your recent trip you can tell us about?
I was in the Addis Alem project area where we are working with community health workers. We were in a village where they were doing a door-to-door survey, and they took us to a particular family that they were very attached to. They told us that this was the house of a very elderly gentleman who had not been able to see anything for the last six years.
When they first met him during their initial survey, he had lost all hope of getting his sight back. But they had counselled him and then they took that gentleman to the hospital at their own cost to make sure he got an operation.
You could see the smile on this gentleman’s face, and it was incredible! That family is highly grateful to all these health extension workers who are doing marvellous work.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity. You can learn more about our work in Ethiopia here.
A group of women and men cluster around a table, peering at an illustration on a digital drawing tablet held up by artist Anil Kumar. The illustration depicts a young girl showing her mother a school certificate. One of the women looks closely at the illustration before making a comment. “The girl should be holding a trophy,” she says. The others agree – a trophy is a better symbol for school achievement than a certificate alone. The artist begins sketching a trophy into the girl’s other hand. The group nods their approval of the change.
The scene above was one of many such moments observed by the Operation Eyesight team during a recent community workshop in the city of Udhampur in northern India. The goal of the workshop was to get input on some new educational materials from members of the communities where they will be used.
The illustration described above is from a series of flash cards that tell the story of a mother with vision problems who doesn’t understand why her daughter has received an award at school because she can’t read the writing on the certificate. The story is meant to jumpstart conversations about why women in the region are often hesitant to seek out eye health care.
Over two days, eight community members from several villages in our project area worked with an Operation Eyesight team that included an artist, a writer, a gender equality specialist and several of our program managers.
“It’s important to note that the community was the driver for these materials,” says Dr. Troy Cunningham, our Country Director for India. “Our experts took the backseat. The images were decided by the community members, the stories were decided by them. Even before the artist and writer sat down with the community, we took them around the villages to meet people with eye problems.”
The new educational materials are just one small part of a larger eye health project we are undertaking in the region. Called “Empowering Women in Rural India by Debunking Feminine Eye Health Myths,” the project was launched in 2022 in partnership with the nearby Rotary Eye and ENT Hospital in Udhampur, and Edmonton’s NorQuest College. The project is being funded by the Inter-Council Network’s FIT program, which stands for “The Fund for Innovation and Transformation”. The program is designed to support Canadian organizations so they can test innovative solutions for advancing gender equality in the Global South, and is funded by Global Affairs Canada.
The Udhampur Block stretches over miles of hilly Himalayan terrain in India’s Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir. Roads connecting the region’s villages are prone to flooding and landslides. For many, it’s difficult to leave the village to seek any kind of health care, so vision problems often go ignored, especially for women and girls.
What’s more is that there are a number of gender-related eye health myths that also create barriers to seeking medical care. As a result, our team designed a custom project for the region, which includes sending a four-wheel drive mobile vision clinic staffed with an all-female healthcare team into the area. We have also trained local women as community health workers. These health workers use the new educational materials in their daily work.
Here is a snapshot of some of the new materials that our team and the community members have developed.
Jhanoo is the oldest rhinoceros in her clan. She can’t see well because of her cataracts, but she thinks that she is too old to have them treated. The youngest member of the clan, Banoo, convinces her that she should see the local community health worker. After the visit with the health worker, Jhanoo agrees to get cataract surgery, and after the operation she enjoys a more independent lifestyle. She also gets back to a key role she plays in her community – teaching math to the local children.
This story is designed to ease fears of surgery and show the community how important eye health is to even its oldest members. It is presented to the community participants as a series of flash cards that they put in order to tell the story.
Cunningham says that, initially, his team was concerned that the community members would be offended by the artist’s use of animals to depict people, but they decided to wait and see what feedback they would receive at the workshop in Udhampur. To the team’s surprise, the community members loved the rhinos and told the artist to stick with the theme.
Rani is an embroidery artist. She has a pair of eyeglasses, but she doesn’t wear them because her parents worry they will affect her chances of finding a good life partner. As a result, she makes a lot of errors in her work and her supervisor is unhappy with her. She speaks to a friend who convinces her to wear her glasses more often. Her work improves and she gets a promotion.
This story, shared through a poster, is aimed at getting more young women to seek treatment for vision problems and to wear their eyeglasses. It’s meant to combat the stereotypes that prevent many women from addressing their vision problems.
For the past few months, community health workers in the Udhampur region have been piloting these new materials as they conduct surveys and workshops throughout the project area. Along the way, the team has been continuing to tweak and update the materials to make sure they best serve the communities.
Project Manager Tapobrat Bhuyan says the materials are important tools for understanding the issues in each village.
“They can explore the main concepts and myths through the stories told in the materials,” he says. “All the materials come with a session guide, and there are some excellent questions in the guide that help them to understand the problems in the community.”
The project is just one more way we are working towards the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), particularly SDG number five, Gender Equality.
Sixteen-year-old Vanessa dreams of being a doctor someday. But when she started having trouble reading the blackboard at school, her grades began to suffer, and she worried she would never have the opportunity to study medicine.
The Grade 11 student lives in Matero, a high-density neighbourhood in Lusaka, Zambia. Last year, her school’s health club coordinator suggested that she get her eyes checked at the Matero Vision Centre, a clinic established with Operation Eyesight's support in 2021. From there, Vanessa was referred to Lusaka’s University Teaching Hospital.
At the hospital, Vanessa received a diagnosis for cataracts. She also learned that she has diabetes, a metabolic disease that put her at a high risk of developing various eye conditions, including cataracts. Doctors helped her get her blood sugar levels under control and she underwent surgery on both eyes.
But Vanessa’s struggles weren’t over yet. After the cataract surgery, she went back to school but still had trouble reading the blackboard, and she couldn’t see clearly at night. Her grades continued to slip, and she had trouble concentrating in class. During a follow-up appointment, Vanessa was told she also needed eyeglasses. She received a prescription, but her parents couldn’t afford the cost of the glasses.
Working with our partners at the OneSight EssilorLuxottica Foundation, we paired up Vanessa with the eyeglasses she needed. Since 2021, EssilorLuxottica has provided thousands of eyeglasses to patients at the Matero and Maamba Vision Centres in Zambia so that more children like Vanessa can get a pair of glasses quickly and free of charge.
Now, Vanessa proudly wears her tortoiseshell-framed glasses to school every day. “Now, I can see faraway objects clearly,” she said. “This will help me concentrate in class and achieve my dream of becoming a doctor.”
With files from Zambia Program Manager Kelly Kaira.
Give the Gift of Sight today and help restore sight and independence for more girls like Vanessa. Vision impairment disproportionately affects women and girls, but they are less likely to be prioritized for eye health care. That’s why our Hospital-Based Community Eye Health projects are aimed at reaching everyone in need of eye care, regardless of gender or family income.
Before she had cataract surgery, Ratna’s family worried about her non-stop. Each day, her husband, son and daughter-in-law would leave her at home with her young grandson so they could tend to the farm. But due to her fading vision, Ratna couldn’t safely care for the boy, and eventually she even had trouble looking after herself.
After taking a few bad falls, the family decided her daughter-in-law would have to stay home with her, a move that had a serious effect on the family’s income.
“I felt very depressed,” says Ratna of her loss of independence. The grandmother, who lives in Tokha, Nepal, explained that she couldn’t even recognize her own son and had to ask him to call out to her so she could identify him. She needed an escort just to get to the bathroom and back, and she despaired about not being able to care for her family the way they were caring for her.
When a community health worker visited the household, Ratna was referred to the Nepal Eye Hospital, where she was diagnosed with cataracts. She explains that she hadn’t realized that her condition could be treated, and initially she was nervous about getting surgery.
“I gathered strength,” she says, “Because the community health worker told me the treatment would change my world.”
Thanks to our partnership with the Nepal Eye Hospital, Ratna underwent phacoemulsification surgery – a technique that doesn’t require sutures and has a short recovery time – free of charge.
Soon, Ratna was back in the family home, thrilled to get back to a more independent lifestyle.
With her son sitting as a ward chairman in the community, Ratna feels that she can set an example by telling others about her success with the surgery.
“Now I am a strong pillar for the family, setting an example for others to get the eye care services without fear,” she proudly says.
But the best part, according to her son? “Now, she is happy,” he says.
Give the Gift of Sight today and help restore sight and independence for more women like Ratna. Vision impairment disproportionately affects women and girls, but they are less likely to be prioritized for eye health care. That’s why our Hospital-Based Community Eye Health projects are aimed at reaching everyone in need of eye care, regardless of gender or family income.
The last few months of 2022 were busy ones for Caroline Ikumu, our program manager in Kenya (pictured above at far right). She spent much of that time on the road, travelling to visit our projects in Elgeyo Marakwet County.
But she isn't complaining. The cause of all this busyness was one to celebrate. Between October and the end of December of last year, 20 villages in the county were declared Avoidable Blindness-Free.
Far from being a mere formality, these declarations are the culmination of years of collaboration between the community, the local government and the partner hospital.
“In simple terms,” Caroline explains, “Avoidable Blindness-Free means that nobody in the village is suffering from blindness or visual impairment due to treatable and avoidable conditions, and the community is aware of where to get the services for new cases.”
Our approach
We call our approach the “Hospital-Based Community Eye Health Model.” It's a mouthful, but essentially it means we facilitate door-to-door screening to communities in remote and underserved villages and make referrals to our partner hospitals where people can access treatment.
In Kenya, we work with community health volunteers who are trained in primary health care and provide health education and services at the village level throughout the county. We deliver additional training in eye health, and then the volunteers go door to door in our project area to screen community members for eye conditions.
As they screen, the volunteers make referrals to the partner hospital, the eye unit at the Iten County Referral Hospital, where people can get treatment, such as cataract surgery or a pair of eyeglasses, free of charge. A volunteer might return to the same household several times to make sure every member of the family has been screened.
The community health volunteers also encourage people identified with eye problems to attend outreach camps that are centrally located within the villages to make sure everyone has access to further screenings. From there, transport may be arranged for those needing treatment at the partner hospital.
Working with community leaders and health care workers, we make sure that the community is in support of the project and can take ownership of it.
Health education
Another part of the community health volunteer’s role is providing education about health issues, often attending social meetings such as micro-savings groups called “chamas” to make sure they’re reaching people when it's convenient for them.
Due to misconceptions about surgeries, not everyone jumps at the chance to get treatment, so the volunteers identify community members who have had success with their treatment to act as ambassadors. “So they tell them, ‘I was not able to see. I could not work. Now I’m back at my farm. I’m evidence that you can be treated and start your life again,’” explains Caroline.
Our programmers also conduct PACEH meetings – PACEH being an acronym for Participatory Approach to Community Eye Health. These meetings help our team understand the perception of the community on eye diseases, eye health providers and treatment received. They also identify misconceptions and address gaps in knowledge on eye health, and they ask community members if they know of anyone who might still be experiencing vision loss or blindness. Finally, they ensure community members know where and when to seek treatment so that they can take responsibility for their own eye health going forward.
Resurvey, validation & declaration
Community health volunteers conduct door-to-door surveys again towards the end of project duration to ensure that there are no backlog cases. During these screenings, ophthalmic workers screen at least 10 per cent of the population to see if the volunteers are accurate in their assessments and whether they need any refresher training.
After a village has gone through the resurvey process and we have determined that all those requiring treatment have received it and that the level of eye health awareness is high, the next step is a declaration event. The partner hospital works with community health volunteers and local government officials to arrange a time and date for a village celebration, and they often erect a billboard to mark the achievement.
During the declaration, beneficiaries speak about how their restored sight has changed their lives. Caroline recalls one older woman who had never seen her two grandchildren due to cataracts. After surgery, the grandmother laid eyes on the children for the first time and cried with joy.
“Everyone is happy because they can see their hard work paying off,” says Caroline of the declaration events. “They are proud of themselves because it’s a milestone that we have achieved together.”
Sustainability
Caroline explains that the idea behind eye health education is to change behaviour, so that the community members take charge, prioritize their own eye health and seek treatment when necessary, without anyone having to remind them. By constructing and equipping the eye units and training ophthalmic workers, we ensure the community will continue to have access to treatment for years to come.
Operation Eyesight Universal is committed to working toward the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals, which are a universal call to action to create a more fair, just and equitable world ensuring no one is left behind. Sign up for our eNews to learn more about how we are working to end poverty, promote good health and well-being, increase gender equality, provide access to clean water and promote partnerships to achieve the goals.
Thanks to her determined mom, two-year-old Venus is getting treatment for an eye condition that could have caused her irreversible vision loss.
The cheerful toddler was born in 2020, the same year her parents moved back to their home village after widespread lockdowns in India were announced. The little girl was thriving under the care of her extended family when her mother Priyanka noticed that Venus’s eyes were not symmetrical.
It’s a common belief that strabismus, the condition that causes someone’s eyes to point in different directions, goes away on its own. However, children rarely outgrow the condition without treatment. Priyanka wasn’t willing to wait and see.
She worried about the stigma that her little girl would face due to the misalignment of her eyes, knowing she’d be teased by classmates. She also wondered how the condition would affect her daughter’s vision, and consequently, her education and her future.
So when she took Venus in for a routine check-up at the government hospital, Priyanka asked about her daughter’s eyes but was told that there was no treatment for eye conditions at the facility. Priyanka became more and more concerned, worrying that the eye condition would affect Venus’s schooling and professional life.
When a community health worker from the nearby Khanapur Vision Centre knocked on the family’s door, Priyanka had her daughter examined. The health worker identified Venus’s eye condition as strabismus and said that it needed to be treated as quickly as possible. Venus got a referral to the vision centre where an optometrist explained that the little girl’s eye condition could be treated with simple procedures at our partner hospital, the MM Joshi Eye Institute in Hubli, just a few hours away.
Priyanka took Venus to the hospital, where she started undergoing patch therapy. Now, Priyanka is thrilled to see the improvements in her daughter’s eye condition.
Vision is a basic human right. Through door-to-door community outreach in remote villages combined with counselling and health education, every single child, woman and man in a community can be reached. Learn more about our unique approach by signing up for our newsletter.
Twelve-year-old Paul is excelling in school for the first time in years. Until recently, the Kenyan sixth grader found schoolwork tiring and difficult because of his poor vision. But now he's taking charge of his own eye health – and it’s paying off. He's discovered a new passion and has new dreams for the future.
Paul’s mother first noticed when he was a toddler that his eyes didn’t point in the same direction. She took him to a hospital where a clinician told her that Paul might lose his eyesight completely if he had surgery to fix the problem. She decided not to take the risk, and by grade four, Paul was having trouble reading. Eventually he could not read the blackboard at all and had to copy notes off other students. His eyes became tired after the long school day, and his classmates teased him about his appearance.
Things changed for Paul in October 2021, when his school was a participant in our School Eye Health Program, funded by the United States Agency for International Development’s (USAID’s) Child Blindness Program. The program has screened more than 86,000 school children in Kenya’s Uasin Gishu County by training teachers to identify students with visual impairments using a smartphone app called Peek Acuity. After the initial screening, students with possible eye conditions are referred to a nearby vision centre or hospital for further assessment.
After the screeners looked at Paul’s eyes, they advised him to go to our partner hospital in nearby Eldoret. When he told his mother, she initially hesitated due to her previous fears that he could lose his vision entirely. But Paul would not give up. “The boy insisted that I take him to hospital because technology has improved and things have changed,” his mother explained.
After consulting with the teacher who screened him, Paul’s mother took him to the Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital. As a partner in the School Eye Health Program, the hospital’s ophthalmic staff had recently received updated training in pediatric eye health as well as some new medical equipment. At the hospital, Paul was formally diagnosed with a squint, also called strabismus, a condition that causes misalignment of the eyes. He had surgery for the condition, the cost of which was covered through our program.
Today, Paul can see clearly and reads the blackboard with ease. Before surgery, he was always the second last in his class, but now he is among the top 10 of 40 students, and he says that kids no longer make fun of him. With his newly discovered love of math, Paul hopes to become an engineer someday.
With files from Caroline Ikumu
Donate today to help open a world of possibilities for more children like Paul.
Today, 36-year-old Benson keeps himself busy by managing his flourishing corn and cassava crops. But that wasn’t always the case.
Benson lives in a village northeast of Nairobi, in an arid part of Kenya’s Embu County. In 2015, his vision began to fade. Neither he nor anyone in his family knew what caused the vision loss, and as it worsened, his frustration mounted. He started to distance himself from his family, and he tried punishing his own eyes for their failure to see clearly.
“I decided to never open my eyes and I would beat them for not seeing,” he said, recalling how confused he was at the time.
No longer able to farm and feeling isolated from others, Benson turned to alcohol and street drugs to fill his time. He spiralled into depression, and his family noticed his behaviour was becoming more and more unpredictable.
Things came to a head when Benson became violent, breaking the windows of his mother’s home with a walking stick. Concerned for his wellbeing, Benson’s family intervened by taking him to a rehabilitation centre, hopeful that with the right support, he might overcome his addictions.
While in rehabilitation, a doctor visiting the centre took a look at Benson’s eyes and diagnosed him with bilateral cataracts. A manager, having heard of a new eye clinic at a local hospital, took Benson into the city for further care.
At the eye unit at Kerugoya County Referral Hospital, Benson’s diagnosis was confirmed, and he was booked in for cataract surgery. The eye unit was made possible by a collaboration between the hospital and Operation Eyesight, with our organization providing the medical equipment and training for the ophthalmic workers. Before the eye unit was established, people like Benson had to travel more than two hours to Nairobi to get eye health services – a huge barrier for people who don’t own a vehicle.
When the bandages came off, Benson couldn’t believe the difference the surgery had made. He asked for a mirror, then jumped up and down with excitement when he saw his own face grinning back at him. After years of living in darkness, he could once again see.
When he went back to the rehabilitation centre, the other patients could hardly believe it when he said he had regained his vision in just a few short days.
His father, after hearing the news, had his own eyes checked and was also diagnosed with cataracts. Like Benson, he received cataract surgery free of charge, and regained his sight.
After Benson left the rehabilitation centre, he decided to take up farming. He’s grateful that he no longer has to rely on his family financially. Now in recovery, with his depression being managed, Benson's ambitions are growing. He hopes to buy more land soon, so he can continue to flourish and become more independent.
With files from Patrick Wainaina, IT Officer, Kenya
Mangos, guavas, lemons and heaps of vegetables – all things that students at a Mweela Primary School in Sinazongwe can cultivate now, thanks to a hand pump in the courtyard.
Imagine going to school and not being able to access clean water. How would you stay hydrated? Stay clean and sanitary? Stay engaged in your learning?
“Water is life,” says Nene Kaunga. “In school, we teach learners the importance of water and the sources of water.”
The school’s deputy head teacher goes on to explain that the borehole saves them from walking long distances to fetch water and may provide the only safe drinking water that some of their rural students have access to throughout the day.
Operation Eyesight, with help from our generous donors, installed the borehole in 2008 to help prevent the spread of trachoma. The spread of this infectious disease, which causes vision loss, eye pain and eventually blindness, can be prevented with frequent hand and face washing. For that, you need safe, clean water.
“Hygienically, this water is very safe,” says Nene. “We’ve never had any child who has suffered from waterborne diseases as a result of drinking this water.”
On site access to clean water enables the Gift of Sight for students, but there are even more ripple effects. Since the borehole was installed, teachers have seen more girls enrolling and staying in school. And they’re no longer staying home from school during their periods, thanks to the fresh water, soap and pads the school provides.
As well as tending to an orchard and vegetable garden, the students also use the water to wash their hands and faces, clean the latrines and, on Fridays, mop their classrooms.
The ability to attend school and without the barrier of unsafe water provides not only the Gift of Sight for students in our areas of work, but also a life with endless potential.
Please give the Gift of Sight today.