Do you wear glasses?? How would you feel if you somebody took them off you or said you couldn’t use them anymore? Would you be able to see the board in school or even read a book? And even if you don’t wear glasses, put your hands over your eyes and imagine not being able to see at all.
In Malawi glasses are very rare! Only the well educated and wealthy are able to buy them so for the children at Matandani, this is a ‘luxury’ that most of them do not even know about. Many of the children will go through school assuming that even if they have bad eye sight, everybody else must be the same.
Research shows that up to 15% of children in the world need eye care, and even if you take 10% of the Matandani children, that would mean there are 120 children who could have their life transformed by a simple pair of prescriptive glasses!
hello my 
I met some people who worked for an organisation called ‘Good Vision Glasses’. It’s a German charity whose goal is to try and get affordable glasses to the poorest people and help transform their lives! They have never visited a primary school in Malawi before but after a meeting with them, we decided that it would be a great idea to do a mass eye test for all the children at the school to see exactly how many children need glasses to help them succeed at Matandani and in their everyday lives!
This is exactly what happened this week. You can see from the pictures that the children were excited to get tested and we needed a team of five opticians to make it happen! It was a long two days for all involved but we now know that 307 children need to have a proper detailed eye test to see if they actually need a pair of prescriptive glasses! Not all of these children will need glasses but they will all get a proper check just in case!
Our next challenge though is trying to get these glasses for these children who need them. It is my biggest priority to make this happen this month as I believe that this has the potential to completely change the lives of all these children affected.
I want to give the gift of sight back to these children, the cost of these amazing glasses are just 5 euro. It is a main priority for me to try and raise the funds needed to make this huge difference and with the help of “Good Vision Glasses”, together we will try and find sponsors!
If you want to know more about this fantastic charity, visit their website www.goodvisionglasses.com
