What We Do
Unite For Sight is an international leader in both providing eye care worldwide and offering service and hands-on public health opportunities for volunteers.
Unite For Sight's Unwavering Commitment To Creating Real, Lasting Impact Involves Three Types of Programs:
- Chapters in North America: University student volunteers are trained to provide vision screenings and education programs in local community centers such as at soup kitchens and homeless shelters. Those screened are matched with free health coverage programs so that they can receive a complete eye exam by an eye doctor.
- International Eye Care Outreach Programs: The goal of Unite For Sight and its partner eye clinics and communities is to create eye disease-free communities. Unite For Sight's volunteers (local and visiting) work with partner eye clinics to provide eye care in communities without previous access. The eye clinic's eye doctors and Unite For Sight volunteers jointly provide community-based screening programs in rural villages. The clinic's eye doctors diagnose and treat eye disease in the field, and surgical patients are brought to the eye clinic for surgery. Unite For Sight sponsors all of the eye care programs, including providing patients with free surgery so that no patient remains blind due to lack of funds. In addition to Unite for Sight's measurable impact, there is an equally compelling achievement. The organization has found a way to unite doctors, nurses, students, and other people, especially younger people, across borders, across economic status, and across professional lines.
- Global Health and Social Entrepreneurship Conference: The conference annually convenes more than 2,200 participants from all 50 states and more than 55 countries. The conference participants represent a great range of diversity, including students, nurses, doctors, policy-makers, nonprofit directors and volunteers, public health professionals, health educators, community health workers, researchers, social scientists, social workers, social entrepreneurs, philanthropists, teachers, lawyers, and business executives. The goal of the conference is to exchange ideas and best practices across disciplines in order to improve public health and international development. Participants are encouraged to attend presentations in fields that may be outside of their existing expertise so that they can learn about successful strategies in other fields and apply those ideas to their own work.
Unite For Sight at a Glance
Organization Founded: 2000
International Programs Founded: 2004
Global Health Conference Founded: 2004
Volunteers Trained: 5,022
Medically Underserved Persons Helped By Unite For Sight: 600,000
Sight-Restoring Cataract Surgeries Funded: 17,000
Eyeglasses Donated To Partner Eye Clinics: 703,990
Unite For Sight Creates Innovative, Unique, and Sustainable Change
- Our model reduces costs and expands the ability of all people to "Unite For Sight" and help in the fight against blindness. We mobilize volunteers on a grand scale to work with partner eye clinics to deliver vital screening and eye education in medically underserved communities.
- We rethink the delivery of eye care and create a more resourceful and efficient model for screening and treating patients that utilizes volunteers to serve as support staff for the outreach programs coordinated by eye clinics. Our new form of delivery reduces all of the barriers to health care, including financial, transportation, and education barriers. All patients with eye disease receive treatment and surgery by the eye clinic, which is funded by Unite For Sight.
- All programs are tailored to the needs of each community through sustainable solutions that reduce health disparities and build the capacity of the local community.
- We not only eradicate blindness and eye disease, but we also boost incomes through entrepreneurial skill building for blind patients and their families. We have an educational scholarship fund that enables children to attend school.
- We have a great ability to adapt to the needs of the communities we serve and to quickly develop sustainable solutions for existing eye care problems.
