Improving Lives Through Better Vision

More than one billion people around the world need but cannot afford eye exams and glasses. Poor performance at school and at work, among other problems, is the result.

In response, the nonprofit group OneSight builds eye-examination centers and is expanding into countries where it has not worked, including Rwanda and Brazil.

“We’re trying to reach people in remote communities and potentially in areas where there isn’t consistent electricity or internet,” says the executive director, K-T Overbey, who added that the group is expanding its fundraising so it can reach more people. “We’ve started bringing a full manufacturing lab,” she says, “so that we can manufacture the glasses on-site.”

Vision care has become a popular cause for wealthy philanthropists. Richard Branson recently announced a joint fund of $105 million, including money from the Gates Foundation, the ELMA Foundation, and others, with the goal of ending trachoma, a blinding disease. The Seattle businessman Donald Sirkin, who died in 2014, left $125 million to a then-tiny charity called LightHouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired.

OneSight, formerly the charity arm of the eyewear company Luxottica, is now an independent nonprofit. It does some work in the United States, but Africa and Asia are among its primary target areas because they have some of the highest levels of potentially blinding eye diseases. The nonprofit serves China through a longtime partnership with Stanford University’s Rural Education Action Program.

Maria Ferreria Da Costa, a 101-year-old seamstress in Brazil and mother of nine is one of 10 million people who have received vision screenings, eye exams, and glasses through OneSight.

She and some family members had their eyes checked when a team from the nonprofit visited a site near their small village, Cuia, on the Amazon River. Da Costa, who now sports a sleek pair of black-framed glasses, joked that with her improved eyesight, she has more energy than ever.