Sponsorships
Share resources and knowledge with active organisations committed to improving worldwide visual health.
Optometry Giving Sight was established in 2003 to address the needs of more than 670 million men, women and children around the world who are blind or visually impaired simply because they do not have access to eye exams and a pair of glasses. Why? Because in some countries there are not enough trained eye care professionals and there is no infrastructure to support these desperately needed eye care services.
Optometry Giving Sight is a global fundraising campaign that reaches over 200 000 Optometrists around the world and their nearly 325 million patients in an attempt to fund a sustainable solution.
Optometry Giving Sight is a joint initiative of the World Optometry Foundation (WOF), the International Centre for Eyecare Education (ICEE) and the International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness (IAPB) and supports the goals of VISION 2020: The Right to Sight, an initiative of IAPB and the World Health Organization (WHO). VISION 2020 aims to eliminate avoidable blindness by the year 2020 in order to give all people the right to sight.
How funds are distributed
Optometry Giving Sight raises funds that go directly to projects around the world that ensure sustainable, lasting results in three ways:
- Eye care service delivery: exams, low-cost eye glasses and low vision devices;
- Human Resources: training for Optometrist, eye care personnel and their teachers;
- Infrastructure development: establish and support eye clinics and schools of optometry.
Optometry Giving Sight currently funds 3 long-term primary eye care priority projects:
- Giving Sight to Blind Children in East Africa
- The National Refractive Error Program for South Africa
- Vision Care Service Development in Sri Lanka.
As funds grow over time, other sustainable refractive error projects will be eligible to apply for funding, including Canadian mission charities. Optometry Giving Sight works in collaboration with Optométristes Sans Frontières.
As a National non-financial sponsor, Optometric Services Inc. encourages its members, suppliers and staff to support Optometry Giving Sight, the Canadian Association of Optometrists international charity of choice and now OSI’s charity of choice.
“We are pleased to work with Optometry Giving Sight, making them our main international charitable involvement. As Canada’s largest Network of independent Optometrists, we believe that OSI’s 775 clinics and 1500 Optometrists can make a real difference helping them raise the financial resources they need to help millions of people around the world see better,” OSI's President and CEO, Marcel Brin.
For more information and/or to make a donation, please visit www.givingsight.org.
