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HOYA and the Etnia Barcelona Foundation looking into your eyes

HOYA has joined the Etnia Barcelona Foundation Project, “Looking into your eyes”, which seeks to improve the visual health of children and teenagers in vulnerable situations.

HOYA has taken yet another step forwards in its commitment to society. This time, it is together with the Etnia Barcelona Foundation in an outstanding, highly important activity aimed at improving the visual health, and consequently the quality of life, of children and teenagers in a vulnerable situation in the city of Barcelona. The commitment of the two organisations to both improve and raise awareness of visual health has crystalised in the sixth edition of the “Looking into your eyes” social project. HOYA is a world leader in the manufacture of eyeglass lenses and has collaborated by donating the lenses needed for each and every one of the children found to require refractive correction.

The activity counted on the help of both volunteer students and lecturers from the Terrassa Faculty of Optical and Optometric Studies of the Polytechnic University of Catalonia (UPC) and from the Barcelona Salvador Seguí Professional Training School. The project works with the Open Centres of Barcelona City and of the Metropolitan Area of Barcelona. The student volunteers carry out the visual screening of the children and teenagers while the volunteer optometrists prescribe the best solution for the specific diagnosis and the optical students  assemble the appropriate lenses in the frames donated by Etnia Barcelona, to complete the cycle.

“Looking into your eyes”, a community project to favour visual health

Etnia Barcelona Foundation has opted for an initiative that focusses on the visual health of vulnerable boys and girls at risk in Catalonia. “Looking into your eyes”  started in 2016, with the aim of raising societal awareness of the importance of caring for the eyesight of children, with a view to improving their quality of life and reducing levels of school failure.

While at school, it is key to a child’s proper physical and educational development to identify any visual issues he or she may have. With this initiative, children and teenagers are professionally examined and diagnosed and, if necessary, offered visual therapy to aid their intellectual and personal development.

The examinations of minors aged between 6 and 17, take place once a month at different public centres around the Metropolitan Area of Barcelona. On examination, it is determined whether or not the child needs prescription glasses and, if found necessary, the child is provided with Etnia frames fitted with Hoya lenses, completely free of charge. If necessary, the child will also be offered visual therapy and a follow-up programme.

Three or four weeks after the check-up, the families are able to pick up the glasses prescribed for the child at the nearest support optician. This way they will come into direct contact with a professional optician who will ensure the glasses fit properly and offer a guarantee on the glasses if they were to break or be damaged. Lastly, they will given further eye tests to see if their prescription changes.

“To work together on such a wonderful, ever so essential project as “Looking into your eyes”, is a source of great satisfaction to us. One of our goals at HOYA is to improve people’s quality of life by helping improve their eyesight. To such ends, we engage in on-going research work to find the very best, scientifically based solutions in terms of the very best quality eyeglass lenses. Working together with Etnia Barcelona allows us to achieve our goal of providing this vulnerable population with the optical facilities needed to help them improve their eyesight and thus their quality of life. Hoya’s donation of eyeglass lenses is a basic part of the way we strive to help society and is something we have been doing for many years, as part of the firm’s social outreach programme. It is vital to detect refractive errors while children are still of a school age, if we seek to treat them in a timely way. At Hoya we invest a large part of our resources in researching and finding the best possible ophthalmic solutions for children, solutions like MiYOSMART, our eyeglass lenses which, according to substantial scientific evidence, best manage childhood myopia,” according to Carolina Rodríguez, Eye Care Business Manager at HOYA Lens Iberia.

HOYA’s outreach work together with the Etnia Barcelona Foundation adds to the many different areas of cooperation in which the Japanese firm engages, with its donation of eyeglass lenses. These include its longstanding cooperation with the Miradas Solidarias (Looking With You) programme run by the University Vision Centre of the Polytechnical University of Catalonia, which works with people at risk of exclusion to provide them with the eyeglass lenses they need to correct their eyesight.

About HOYA

Founded in 1941 in Tokyo (Japan), HOYA Corporation is a global Med-Tech company and a leading supplier of innovative high-tech and medical products. Hoya’s different divisions and business units research and develop products used in healthcare and information technology. In the area of healthcare, the firm offers medical products such as eyeglass lenses, endoscopes, contact and intraocular lenses, orthopaedic implants, surgical-therapeutic devices and solutions for the reprocessing and disinfection of devices. In terms of IT, it offers products such as optical lenses and glasses, photomasks and blanks for the manufacture of semiconductor chips and LCDs/OLEDs, text-to-speech software, HR and other software products, as well as industry critical mass and cloud storage solutions. With over 150 offices and subsidiaries worldwide, Hoya currently has a global workforce of 37,000 people.

About HOYA Vision Care

For over 60 years, HOYA Vision Care has been a passionate and global leader in optical technology innovation. As a manufacturer of high quality, high performing eyeglass lenses, HOYA continuously aims to bring the best possible vision care solutions to Eye Care Professionals and their patients around the world. The company supplies lenses in 110 countries with a network of over 17,000 employees and 43 laboratories around the globe.

About Etnia Barcelona Foundation

Etnia Barcelona Foundation is Etnia Barcelona’s outreach project which seeks to defend the right to proper eyesight around the globe. It was founded in 2016 with the mission of providing access to visual health and care for the most vulnerable families, seeking to improve their eyesight and quality of life.

Etnia Barcelona Foundation believes that proper, free care of eyesight forms an integral part of a child’s right to health. To such ends, the Etnia Barcelona Foundation focusses on correcting the problems boys and girls encounter with their eyesight, striving to ensure they face ever fewer issues and have adequate access to visual health care and proper follow-up procedures.

The Etnia Barcelona Foundation also centres its efforts on the establishment of community opticians, led by women, in developing countries. The aim is to improve the services offered to those members of the local community most wanting in resources while, at the same time, helping empower local women.