Give the Gift of Sight to 100 children

Dear Friend,

Thank you for standing with us. Since our last update, the HOPE SA Mobile Healthcare Clinic has kept moving :  testing 50 more people across our sites, bringing our total to 107 people screened for vision problems that quietly derail a child's schooling or a pensioner's independence.

Where we are:

• 107 people screened, children and elderly community members alike
• 10 pairs of prescription glasses provided so far
• 400 sanitary pads distributed to girls in the communities we visit

The honest picture: screening is the easy part — a few minutes with an optometrist tells us who needs glasses. Paying for those glasses is where we're stuck. Our students come from families who are already stretched thin just covering school fees and food, and our pensioners are living on grants that don't leave room for anything beyond rent and medication. We've diagnosed far more people than we've been able to fund glasses for — which means children are still struggling to see the board, and elderly patients are still struggling to read a label or cross a road safely, simply because we haven't caught up with the need yet.

That's why we've grown this project's goal to $10,000 — enough to close that gap for the 100 children we set out to reach this year, keep glasses coming for the pensioners we test alongside them, and keep the mobile clinic running for the maternal health and community screenings it also provides every month.

What your donation does right now:

• $10 — screens 5 more people, so we know who needs help
• $25 — puts glasses on a child who's already been diagnosed and is waiting
• $50 — provides eye tests and glasses for 2 pensioners who can't afford them on their own
• $270 — clears an entire classroom's worth of diagnosed children — 10 kids, glasses in hand

Neither a struggling student nor a pensioner on a fixed income can absorb this cost themselves. That's the gap your donation closes.

Thank you for being part of this.

With gratitude, Namritha Sivsanker