Love at First Sight: 7-year-old Arush, a glasses recipient, reviewing his photos. © Courtesy of Seva Canada
For most of us, sight is something we take for granted. We can’t imagine not opening our eyes and letting the world in. For most of us, eye care is readily available when we need it. But globally, an estimated 43 million people are blind. Forty-three million people can’t see the faces of their loved ones, sunsets, or roads to explore. And while the number 43 million is hard to look at, here’s another that will open your eyes: 36 million people who are blind don’t have to be. Because 80 per cent of all blindness is either treatable or preventable. Four out of five people who can’t see could regain their sight with proper medical care.
But the most crucial factor is that your ability to see actually has nothing to do with your eyes. It’s where you live. Ninety per cent of all people who are blind live in low- and middle-income countries, places without access to proper eye care and medical facilities. And that’s a missing piece in the world that Vancouver-based Seva Canada is trying to fill. Seva Canada is a global, non-profit eye care organization committed to treating and preventing vision loss in low-and middle-income countries. The ability to see, connect, work, and live independently should not be determined by where you live.
To date, Seva donors have restored vision to over five million people, transforming countless lives.
Right now, Seva Canada’s “Love at First Sight” campaign is launching across Canada. This campaign is not about numbers, stats, and stories of pity. It’s about empowerment. It is an uplifting, human campaign that allows all of us to share the joy a patient feels when their sight is restored. Earlier this year, Seva Canada staff travelled to Nepal and India and provided cameras to patients who had just had vision-restoring cataract surgery.
Our request was simple: we asked patients to document their initial experience of seeing the world anew. When the bandages came off, the world came in. And our cameras captured some of what they saw. Family, faces, and communities filled the eyes of these patients. As did tears of joy. Seva Canada is sharing those images to hopefully make the world take notice of how little it takes to make such a big difference in someone’s life.
A simple $50 donation restores sight with a 15-minute cataract surgery. Even just a $5 donation supplies prescription glasses to patients of all ages, especially children who long to see their mother’s face instead of just hearing her voice. When you restore someone’s vision, you are not just changing one life; you are changing all the lives around that person, impacting everyone who cares for them.
The “Love at First Sight” campaign is designed not just to show you what patients see when they first open their eyes but also to show everyone how little it takes to make a life-changing difference for someone who is blind or visually-impaired simply because of where they were born. That’s both fundamentally unfair and within our power to correct.
For most of us, vision is a gift. This campaign is our chance to give it.
Learn more at seva.ca/LoveAtFirstSight
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Seva Canada is a charity whose mission is to restore sight and prevent blindness in low- and middle-income countries.