I’ll never forget my 1st GV2020 eyeglasses distribution. It was several years ago in Ensenada, Mexico. Each morning we were driven out of the city to more rural areas with great poverty. It was not until the third day that our driver hopped in line for a check-up.
I immediately thought to myself (after a quick chuckle), “Nah, there is NO WAY he needs glasses. He’s a hired driver for Pete’s sake. He would have gotten glasses years ago.” How naïve of me.
My colleague treated him and, low and behold, he was driving around – for how long, we don’t know – with 20/200 vision.
That is illegal here. By law we must be corrected to 20/60 vision or we cannot get a license. And this standard makes perfect sense. It makes us safer.
Safety is defined by Merriam-Webster as: the condition of being safe from undergoing or causing hurt, injury, or loss.
We take steps to be safe every day and we do the same for our children. We teach them to look both ways before crossing the street, to buckle up in the car, and to wear a helmet when riding a bike – along with many other things.
But how many of us think of prescription eyeglasses as a mechanism for safety?
I don’t say to myself, let me put my glasses on to be safe. I put my glasses on to see, and that becomes synonymous with being safer.
It is obvious. I see better, therefore I am safer.
This is cultural knowledge.
But watch this…
Although this safari driver didn’t have dangerously bad eyesight, his new glasses made a difference, both to him and his passengers. But until our partners arrived on the scene and provided vision screening tests, he had probably never really thought about correcting the blur.
Yes, our work is about creating access. But it’s also about a public health campaign to make vision correction cultural knowledge everywhere. And in doing so, making everyone safer.
#dialsnapwear #giveglasses #givehope #givesafety