June 1st sounds like Catherine and Will’s busiest day yet. The word is starting to spread from school to school! Here’s yesterday’s update from Catherine:
“The GV2020 team and the Ministry of Education had quite the day! We arrived at Escola Secundaria Zedequias Manganhela around 9 AM and the principal directed us to a room to set-up and get the testing underway.
The Ministry of Education had four representatives with us conducting the vision tests (they are old pro’s by now). While the morning was a bit slow (a younger age group), a handful of children still needed glasses. At some point between the morning group and the afternoon group, the Adjunct Principle of the School arrived to watch the project in action. I was so happy to see that after circling the room a few times to speak with her colleagues, she settled into a desk and began taking the vision test. Needless to say – her vision is perfect!!
There was a lull between the morning group leaving and the afternoon group arriving so Will and I utilized this time to hang out with the kids. I sat with the girls on the sideline discussing music and boyfriends. Will ran around with the boys chasing a soccer ball until he managed to make a goal from some distance. As I’m sure you can imagine, the boys went wild!!
It wasn’t until the second group of the day arrived that the most fascinating trends started appearing during the vision tests. It was astounding that at the same school, on the same day, but a slightly older age group – glasses seemed to be needed by every patient being seen. A sizable amount of these children had to be prescribed lens strengths of -3 or higher! And despite the long lines and wait, kids continued to flood through the doors. We didn’t leave the school until well after 5 PM, once every student that needed to be seen had been evaluated.
It was really cool to see how needed Global Vision 2020 was here today, also to realize that these glasses will impact these students and quite possibly the outcome of their future! It was without a doubt a successful day.”
Well done Catherine! You too Will!
