Unite For Sight: High Impact Through Social Innovation
"Unite For Sight has ballooned, and last year it provided eye care to 200,000 people...Today the most remarkable young people are the social entrepreneurs, those who see a problem in society and roll up their sleeves to address it in new ways. Bill Drayton, the chief executive of an organization called Ashoka that supports social entrepreneurs, likes to say that such people neither hand out fish nor teach people to fish; their aim is to revolutionize the fishing industry. If that sounds insanely ambitious, it is." -- Nicholas D. Kristof, "The Age of Ambition," The New York Times, January 27, 2008
Unite For Sight Demonstrates The Highest Standards in Social Entrepreneurship
"Imagine that Andrew Carnegie had built only one library rather than conceiving the public library system that today serves untold millions of American citizens. Carnegie's single library would have clearly benefited the community it served. But it was his vision of an entire system of libraries creating a permanent new equilibrium - one ensuring access to information and knowledge for all the nation's citizens - that anchors his reputation as a social entrepreneur."--Roger L.Martin and Sally Osberg. “Social Entrepreneurship: The Case for Definition.” Stanford Social Innovation Review (Spring 2007): 29-39.
While making a high-impact difference to eliminate preventable blindness, Unite For Sight is engaging and training the next generation of leaders in global health.
Unite For Sight
- Supports eye clinics worldwide by investing human and financial resources in their social ventures to eliminate patient barriers to eye care
- Develops and enhances the capacity and effectiveness of eye clinics to provide care to those living in poverty
- Provides the next generation of global health leaders with the opportunity, training, and tools to drive change
- Cultivates creative collaboration between eye clinics, volunteers, and universities from five continents
Unite For Sight is fundamentally changing:
- the sustainable impact of local eye clinics
- the role of volunteers and their long-term training, engagement, and impact
- the innovative role of a global health conference to provide tools for social change
Unite For Sight Reforms and Revolutionizes: A Pioneer In Multiple Fields
"Through this organization[Unite For Sight]...I see that it's possible for medical practitioners, public health workers, and students, to come together and to achieve what seems impossible. That working selflessly with sensitivity to cultural difference and to human dignity, right thinking individuals can together change the way that the whole world works...And to provide a model for all those idealistic young people...who want to do their part to make this world a better place."--Jane Edwards, Associate Dean for International Affairs, Yale University, at the 2008 Unite For Sight Conference
Unite For Sight's innovative model has enabled the exponential expansion and success of the organization. Our programs are locally led and managed by our partner eye clinics that provide year-round high quality eye care and continuity of care for all patients. Unite For Sight volunteers support and assist the local ophthalmic nurses, optometrists, and ophthalmologists to provide outreach programs that reduce all of the patient barriers to care, including financial, transportation, and education barriers.
While creating a committed vanguard of thousands of volunteers worldwide, Unite For Sight challenges students, professionals, educators, and eye doctors, to rethink what it means to be engaged in high quality global health programs. Unite For Sight and its volunteers and local eye clinic partners make a high-impact difference with measurable results.
- Harnesses idealism with practicality and infrastructure
- Engages thousands of non-eye care professionals in direct eye care services that are eliminating blindness worldwide
- Mobilizes eye care professionals in countries throughout the world to "Unite For Sight", work collaboratively, and exchange skills and best practices across continents
- Invests in social ventures developed by eye clinics globally to eliminate patient barriers to care
- Empowers patients and communities to be engaged in preventing and eliminating blindness
- Connects organizations, eye clinics, universities, the public, and communities, to develop sustainable programs that create permanent change
- Cultivates leadership, talent, and ideas among its eye clinic partners and among its volunteers
- Encourages learning and innovation by organizing an annual global conference for 2,500 participants to share information and best practices across all disciplines of global health and international development
We implement innovative programs that provide the highest quality of care to 600,000 patients worldwide (to date)
- We work with local eye clinic partners to create and implement effective, sustainable eye care programs that demonstrate measurable results.
- Our eye care services are comprehensive, including examinations by local eye doctors, diagnosis and care for all treatable conditions, promotion, and prevention. This full range of services is delivered to the population year-round.
- We eliminate patient barriers to care by fully funding surgeries, bringing eye care services to the patients, providing transportation to the eye clinic for surgery as needed, and educating communities about blindness elimination.
More than 5,200 volunteers have been engaged, inspired, and trained to provide community-based eye health services
- North America Chapters
- Volunteers are trained and empowered to improve eye health and eliminate preventable blindness in their local community
- Volunteers provide visual acuity screenings and match those screened with free health coverage programs so that they can receive a complete eye exam by an eye doctor. The free health coverage programs are offered through high quality professional organizations such as the American Academy of Ophthalmology and American Optometric Association.
- International Eye Care Programs (Volunteer Abroad
Programs)
- Volunteers receive hands-on training in international community-based eye care, public health, and international development
- Volunteers support and assist local eye doctors in partner eye clinics in developing countries
- Volunteers gain skills to become new leaders in global health
- Volunteers fundraise, and 100% of the funds provide sight-restoring eye care for patients living in extreme poverty
- Global Impact Corps (North America)
- Volunteers make a real, lasting global impact from their home campus or community
- Volunteers receive online global health and international development training so that they learn about best practice "gold standard" principles in global health and development
- Volunteers raise funds and educate communities about global eye care needs
More than 2,500 Attend Our Annual Global Health Conference From 60 Countries
- Engages students, professionals, educators, doctors, scientists, lawyers, universities, corporations, nonprofits, and others to develop innovative solutions to achieve global goals
- Provides tools to identify global problems, engage in social entrepreneurship, and create change and real solutions
- Encourges learning and innovation by providing a forum to share information and best practices across all disciplines of global health and international development
- Challenges how people view their role in global health
Our Social Entrepreneurship Is Providing Access To Eye Care For Patients Living in Poverty
The communities where we work did not previously have access to eye care due to many barriers. Unite For Sight's model has enabled local eye clinics to create real change and a sustainable impact for those living in extreme poverty.
- In Tamale, Ghana, ophthalmologist Dr. Wanye is the only eye doctor for 2 million people in the entire region. Prior to working with Unite For Sight, Dr. Wanye often went months without providing a single cataract surgery because the community members could not afford the cost of surgery. Unite For Sight volunteers now work with him to assist with screening outreach programs, and Unite For Sight funds the cataract surgeries for the patients so that no one will remain blind due to lack of funds. In two years, with the support of Unite For Sight, Dr. Wanye has provided 2,544 surgeries to patients living in extreme poverty.
- In Accra, Ghana, Unite For Sight's support has enabled Crystal Eye Clinic to more than double its annual number of surgeries. Unite For Sight annually sponsors more than 2,000 surgeries provided by Crystal Eye Clinic for patients living in extreme poverty.
- In Chennai, India, Uma Eye Clinic has more than quadrupled its capacity to provide surgeries to poor patients from rural villages. During the past two years, Uma Eye Clinic's ophthalmologists provided 2,114 surgeries to patients from rural villages.