More than 450 enthusiastic guests filled Portland’s Patricia Reser Center for the Arts to attend Soor Aur Saptak (SAS), a benefit for Seva Foundation. This year SAS completed its 14th consecutive production, which brought color, energy, and joy to the evening.
Photo above: Dr. Manisha Shreshtha, Pediatric Ophthalmologist; Gopal Bhandari, Optometrist; Sadhan Bhandari, Bachelor in Public Health; Devaki Acharya, Ophthalmic Assistant; Deepak Yadav, Ophthalmic Assistant; Prakash Malla, Ophthalmic Assistant
Seva’s research shows that a child receiving glasses at age five can earn 78% more during their lifetime—just one of the many reasons early eye care matters. At Bharatpur Eye Hospital in Nepal, a new pilot program is making sure even the youngest children get the care they need to see clearly from the start.
Seva partners are ready to see you and your siblings now.
Children inherit many traits – green eyes, curly hair, athletic ability. They can also share vision problems. If one sibling needs glasses due to issues like nearsightedness or cataracts, the others may too.
Right now, somewhere in the world, someone is seeing clearly for the first time – thanks to you.
Through Seva, your compassion does more than restore sight. It brings back the sparkle in a child’s eye, the confidence in a mother’s stride, and the independence of a grandfather finding his way again.
At just 15, Emily faced a life-changing challenge when she suddenly lost her sight after years of watery, itchy eyes. Unable to attend school or work, she spent months at home, unsure of what her future might hold.
Across low-and-middle-income countries, less than half of 10-year-old children can read. This alarming phenomenon has been labelled by education experts around the world as the global ‘learning crisis’: A bitter-sweet situation in which we have achieved near universal primary education, including gender parity, but in which children are not achieving sufficient mastery of basic literacy and numeracy.
Policymakers will need to use a variety of tools to address the learning deficit. One promising but under-considered intervention is hiding in plain sight: eyeglasses.
At the tender age of 11, Pisey is already studying the Khmer language and learning to write in its formal, more difficult form. But she doesn’t stop there; she also draws pictures to accompany her writing. So it was surprising when Pisey’s mom, Dai Vanneth, observed that something was amiss with Pisey’s eyes; they watered while she slept.
Photo: Pristine 5.0 Retinal Camera (formerly Vistaro) in action.
When you think of “disruptive and revolutionary tech,” what comes to mind?
Major companies, start-ups, a laboratory on the brink of discovery – but what about nonprofits?
You read that right, nonprofits. We know nonprofits don’t often come top of mind as being “disruptive,” but we’re here to paint a new picture. Compassion has always been an important driver of innovation at Seva.
At Seva, we invest in a suite of cutting-edge and revolutionary technologies to create a world free of avoidable blindness. Leveraging millions of data points, four decades of experience, and a network of leading public health experts, engineers, and physicians, our best-in-class tech solutions revolutionize the way eye care is delivered worldwide.
“We operate at the scale of a major corporation and the nimbleness of a start-up. Straddling this balance is disrupting the future of ophthalmology and public health – for good”.
– Kate Moynihan, Executive Director, Seva Foundation.
This is the new frontier of compassion driven eye care tech that you support:
Photos: Children you have supported with eye care services through the years.
I see a future astronaut, a teacher, a surgeon or a nurse, and even the next President!
When I joined Seva’s Communications Team in 2019, I made it my mission to inspire action through powerful insights and stories. I dig through data, edit donor reports, and work on advertising campaigns but my greatest joy is reading about the children we serve – learning about their big, bold dreams – and sharing them with you!
Kids like Milka, John, Wendy, and Debdit (pictured above) see this world with starry-eyes, as an adventure where sky’s the limit. They inspire me, as I’m sure they do you, to never lose sight of what’s important in life – joy. It’s why my heart breaks for children who are forced to see the world with uncertainty & despair instead of hope and wonder – and all because of a solvable problem.