Connie’s parents, Walter and Sara Derewianchuk, were active donors to Operation Eyesight, and they shared with their children the power of giving. Likewise, Rob’s parents, Bill and Nora Holland, were also Operation Eyesight donors. For both families, early memories of Dr. Ben Gullison, the physician who inspired Art Jenkyns to found Operation Eyesight, left lasting impressions. Connie remembers him standing before the congregation at her family’s church in Emerson, Manitoba, discussing Operation Eyesight’s work.

“I was in the front pew as a child, listening to Dr. Gullison speak. While he spoke, my younger sister dropped a ball that rolled directly down to him,” Connie recalls. “He simply picked it up and threw it back to my older sister, who was so embarrassed to have to catch the ball from Dr. Gullison. He was not phased by anything.”

Rob, who began donating at just 17, recalled Dr. Gullison showing slides of cataract surgeries performed on patients. These slides soon became real for him, when he encountered a woman with cataracts while he was travelling in Morocco.

“I realized that for many, like the woman I encountered, there was no special support for an older woman experiencing cataracts,” he says. “Although I was in Canada where we have all kinds of support for people experiencing eyesight issues or blindness, I recognized there is something I can do for others through Operation Eyesight.”

After they were married, Connie and Rob passed on the importance of the Gift of Sight to their children. Over their kitchen table, they would discuss philanthropy and what a donation could achieve. They say their goal was to instill in their children the idea and feeling of gratitude.

In a book Rob recently wrote for his children and grandchildren, he notes that donating to Operation Eyesight is his greatest pride. “With our donations to Operation Eyesight, you know that somebody who was blind last month – this month they can see,” Rob says. “So, it is a concrete way of giving.”

Rob’s book has inspired his grandchildren to begin their own fundraising efforts for Operation Eyesight.

“By giving to Operation Eyesight, you know that your donation will help people. It is good to think about who you are giving to, where, and the practicality of your donation,” Connie says.

Rob agrees.

“Whatever your motivation, I think giving should be part of everyone’s life. My giving is an expression of gratitude. Probably until I die, I will give something to Operation Eyesight.”

Thank you, Rob, Connie and family, for your generous support!

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Together, we are establishing and equipping vision care facilities, training existing healthcare staff and developing a continuum of care for patients – from diagnoses at the community level, to referrals for specialized treatments at hospitals, to follow-up care.

The approach was initially launched in three districts in the state of Arunachal Pradesh, in partnership with Jhpiego (an affiliate of Johns Hopkins University) and the state Ministry of Health. Based on the project’s early success, with the support of Optometry Giving Sight, we are now replicating the model in the states of Madhya Pradesh and Meghalaya.

“It’s not about re-inventing the wheel. Integrating basic eye care into the existing primary health care system helps ensure that patients can receive care in a way that is cost-effective, practical and, above all, sustainable,” explains Dr. Troy Cunningham, our country director for India.

“This is how we reach the most disadvantaged populations, as patients who are able to pay most typically seek care at for-profit facilities, rather than attending government services.”

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What sets this community apart? It is the first village in the country we declared Avoidable Blindness-Free.

The December 2022 declaration event was several years in the making and is the product of collaboration between the community, the local government and our partner, Saltpond Government Hospital.

“Avoidable Blindness-Free means that the village is free of untreated vision loss,” explains Emmanuel Kumah, our country director for Ghana. “It also means that people in the community know where to receive care. This is important in communities like Asafora, where there has historically been resistance to receiving eye care.”

Our partnership with Asafora began in 2017 with primary eye care training for 10 local community health nurses. This team conducted door-to-door surveys to identify people with eye conditions, distributed vitamin A supplements and provided basic immunizations. Patients with cataract and other eye conditions were referred to the hospital for treatment.

We conducted a second door-to-door screening in 2021 to see how patients were doing and discovered several patients had refused care.

“We realized there was a lot of resistance to receiving eye care within the community, due to misconceptions about surgery,” Emmanuel explains. “We had to double down on our efforts to educate the community and inspire behavioural change.”

Community health nurses were deployed. They knocked on doors and attended churches, mosques, and child and newborn care sessions where they provided eye health education. Creating awareness and encouraging people to seek eye care helps ensure a village becomes, and stays, Avoidable Blindness-Free.

The declaration event was a landmark for public health in Ghana, and Asafora is the first of many rural villages to be declared Avoidable Blindness-Free in the country.

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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’s Cataract

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’s Story

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.

Next steps

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.

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