We’re just back from Mozambique, where we’ve been working with the Ojos del Mundo and Essilor Internacional 2.5 New Vision Generation foundations working in southern Africa to start up a charity optician that will also be managed by a women’s association in the Vilanculos Province of Inhambane, Mozambique.
The purpose of this project is not only to provide care to the local population for vision problems, including the population with the fewest economic resources, but also to empower women, as we have noted that women exercise their right to vision health significantly less than men as a percentage. In most cases the reasons are social, cultural and environmental, as well as related to the gender division of work in each country.
Thus, there are different variables that contribute to disparities between men and women in the area of prevention and promotion of health, specifically vision health.
On this occasion, the Foundation also wants to contribute to the country’s development. A charity optician for two reasons: the first is that prescription glasses will be sold at a price well below their market price, between $4 and $6. In this way we achieve greater access by the population to vision care and, in the case of the poorest individuals holding an official poverty credential, free vision care.
Thanks to the frames, lenses, instruments and work to upgrade the workshop that Essilor Internacional 2.5 New Vision Generation and Etnia Barcelona Foundation will donate to this project, we will raise money for the community.
Thus we calculate that in the two years we will be accompanying them in the form of donations of material and technical support for instruments, they will be able to use all the profits for restocking and the purchase of new materials to continue fabricating glasses, thereby remaining self-sufficient.
The project is slated to start in November. We will continue informing you. Thanks for following us.