The Eye Love Cares Foundation is a private foundation providing comprehensive eye care, education, and service for the prevention of unnecessary blindness throughout the world. 

Narrative Description of Activities for Eye Love Cares Foundation

Overview 

We believe everyone deserves great vision. But 703 million people are blind due to lack of glasses. It is the mission, duty and purpose of Eye Love Cares to address, educate, coordinate, and provide aid and relief for those in need of eye care on a local and global level. 

We see it as our duty to be available when we are capable to provide one of the most important yet basic human rights to ordinary people by giving them the vision they thought they had lost. This enables them to not only see the faces of their loved ones again, but also provide for themselves and their families through careers they may have lost to poor vision.

Although sight is one of our five senses, Eye Love Cares believes that it is the most important one. Vision is an essential part of learning, working, and functioning in daily life. It is our duty to provide care, education, and outreach for those who need it most, with an emphasis on low- and middle-income, multicultural, and rural communities in both the United States and abroad. Resources will be directed toward grassroots organizations that work principally with these groups of people.

 

Direct Care Clinics

Eye Love Cares, through its sister company Eye Love, has been providing direct eye care services domestically and abroad since 2015. As part of our current and future activities, organizing direct care clinics is one of the most important outreach efforts we participate in. Care clinics are conducted by volunteer optometrists, opticians, nurses, and others who believe in our mission. For at least two weeks per year, we set up clinics to aid those who have no access to quality eye care. Clinics provide much needed health screenings for chronic conditions, comprehensive eye examinations, fittings for glasses and sunglasses, and surgical referrals as needed.

Clinics may be set up in schools, churches, and doctors offices using existing equipment or that provided by volunteers.  Each October, we travel to Jamaica to provide eye care for the people of this country. According to Great Shape, Inc., there are only two public eye care providers for over 500,000 Jamaicans. There are no public optometrists in country, and 43% of Jamaicans have never had an eye exam or been treated for any eye health conditions. These statistics are real, and they represent the very foundation of why we do what we do.

As we look toward the future, Eye Love Cares plans to expand our reach by continuing to provide eye care to those in need in the United States and other countries around the world. Expansion outside of the United States and Jamaica will include not only direct care clinics, but also those that teach native people to perform eye examinations and dispense eyeglasses.

 

Public Education

Eye Love Cares provides free education on eye health through the dissemination of facts, charts, graphs, and statistics. We provide this information by presenting live media interviews, lectures and slideshows at public venues, such as Lion’s Club events.  These presentations focus on the causes, current efforts and solutions to ending vision issues for so many. They also highlight the geographical, economical, and social aspects of this worldwide vision crisis.

We take advantage of various social media outlets such as Facebook communities and groups, our Eye Love blog, and other social networking sites such as YouTube and Instagram. Some of the media outlets that have conducted interviews of or featured Eye Love are:  ABC News, The Millennial Mastermind podcast, Sellercast podcast, CPC Strategy blog and many more. All media interviews can be found on the Eye Love website.

 

Teaching Clinics

We feel it is our duty to not only provide monetary contributions, direct care clinics, and public education, but also provide for the future of the countries we work in. Looking forward, Eye Love Cares will establish teaching clinics in areas that have no access to quality eye care professionals and work through the local people to provide care. For example, we would set up a fully functioning clinic in an underserved Jamaican province where we train interested, local individuals to screen patients for visual and refractive issues. Volunteer nurses, opticians, and optometrists would provide the education these individuals would need to excel in all areas of eye care and educational materials would be provided by the foundation through outside donations and private funding.

These trainees would, at the end of their training, be able to refract patients for their best prescription, manufacture the eyeglasses needed for the patient if a donated pair were not available, and dispense those eyeglasses. If a referral was needed for an eye condition, we would have volunteer optometrists and ophthalmologists in country throughout the year providing for these more comprehensive needs.

We believe educating and training local people is the best way to build the necessary workforce to effect change in countries that have no access to quality eye care services. Creating confident eye care professionals will allow us to build sustainable eye care teams and continually provide the services needed.

 

Foreign Activities

In general, our foreign activities can be summed up into three categories: direct care clinics, monetary contributions, and educational programs.

• Foreign expeditions will include our direct eye care clinics overseas which we will help to organize with other like minded organizations, such as VOSH International, Great Shape, Inc. and the iCare project.

• Foreign contributions will include assistance given to individuals or organizations outside of the United States which have been selected by the board of directors after conducting due diligence and a thorough investigation. The process of selection is in accordance with all applicable laws and regulations concerning our exempt status such as collecting information (i.e. physical address, phone number, mailing address, website, relationships with other organizations, financial standing which includes past and present, and governance).

• Foreign educational programs will include our efforts to provide educational based lectures, slideshows, and in-field training and instruction.

Financial Information

The sources of income for Eye Love Cares derive from personal resources and public donations. Eye Love Cares has a sister company, Eye Love, which provides affordable, high quality sunglasses and eye wellness products to customers while donating a portion of the profits to the foundation.  Additional income sources will include grants, sponsorship, and fundraising. The foundation disposes its income through the decisions made by its board of directors or through the decisions of the duly elected treasurer, whose power to pay expenses is set out by the board or the corporation’s bylaws in accordance to the corporation’s purpose.  Expenses paid by the foundation include, but are not limited to: equipment purchases and rentals, ambassador’s salary and boarding, insurance premiums, internet web site fees, publications, advertising, and miscellaneous clinic and teaching expenses.