Help the world see clearly.
For every custom frame a customer purchases, Indivijual will donate a new pair of adjustable prescription eyeglasses to a person in need of corrective glasses in the developing world.
The Problem
What if you couldn't see well enough to drive, work, or even recognize your family? We use our sense of sight every waking minute to accomplish all tasks, either simple or complex. For those of us in the developed world who need corrective lenses, they are readily available. Imagine if they were not.
There are more than one billion people globally who cannot see clearly because they do not have access to corrective eyeglasses. This lack of eyecare causes a loss in quality of life, employment prospects, productivity and general health.
The problem is caused by the combination of a lack of trained optometric personnel and the cost of eyeglasses to those living in poverty:
- In most developed nations, there is around one optician for every 8,000 people, but in the developing world this ratio is much worse: in many countries it can be as bad as one optician for every million people - in Mali the figure is one optician for every 8 million people.
- But even if tens of thousands of optometrists descended on the developing world to address this issue, the cost of eyeglasses is impossible to bear for many people - the average cost of a pair of eyeglasses in the developing world is far too large for someone living on less than a dollar per day.
About Global Vision 2020
Global Vision 2020 works to bring corrective eyeglasses to the more than one billion people in the developing world who would benefit from them through a combination of methods – using self-adjustable eyeglasses that allow users to correct their own vision and using established distribution networks available through the world’s aid organizations. See www.gv2020.org for details.