About Berkeley Vision
We are a dedicated and child-focused organization, which strives to expand child eye health services by establishing robust and sustainable programs and research related to children's vision.
Berkeley Vision - Every Child Sees works towards making much needed eye care and low vision services accessible to all children in the world. Our emphasis is to provide refractive services with a network of partner organizations across the globe, helping to correct refractive error, manage myopia and provide rehabilitative support for children with low vision.
Berkeley Vision – Children’s Vision Research Institute is the research arm of our organization, focused on the collection, collation, analysis and dissemination of data relating to children’s vision.
Objectives:
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Advocacy to raise awareness, influence policy and practice at global, national, regional and local levels with key organizations and stakeholders.
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Partnerships to develop and strengthen long-term, robust partnerships with education and health service providers (NGOs, government agencies, industry, private organizations) and to ensure accessible, affordable high-quality eye care, including low vision services, for all children.
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Quality control of both service delivery and data to build a robust and accurate database that would be used to guide the development of effective and sustainable children’s eye care programs. Such a database would also provide an important foundation for research.
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Research and establish an evidence base from Every Child Sees eye care services to create an unprecedented platform for research into children’s eye health, refractive error, rehabilitation and public health. The WHO has expressed concern over a lack of research on the value of correcting refractive error. Our outcomes data will directly address these needs.
Uncorrected Refractive Error
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It is estimated that approximately 450 million children have refractive errors worldwide.
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A large proportion of these children do not have access to eye care and have uncorrected refractive error, particularly in developing countries.
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Without intervention, millions of children are unnecessarily suffering from visual impairment, simply because of uncorrected myopia, hyperopia or astigmatism.
- By the year 2050, it has been estimated that without intervention there will be more than 1.3 billion children with myopia, so this problem is going to increase significantly.
Functional Vision should be a Universal Human Right
- There is a need for world-wide and easily-accessible child eye care services for children everywhere.
- There is no organization in the world that is dedicated specifically to refractive error correction and vision in children.
Our Proposal
- A dedicated and child-focused initiative to establish robust and sustainable programs.
- Berkeley Vision - Every Child Sees will work towards making much-needed eye care and low vision services accessible to children everywhere.
- Our emphasis will be on expanding refractive services through the establishment of a network of partner organizations across the globe. This will have significant impact on the control and prevention of myopia as well as rehabilitative support for children with low vision.
One School at a Time is designed to accelerate and enhance access to eye care services to children, across the globe. The program is focusing on four areas to make this happen.
- Creating Partnerships
- Supporting Local Expertise
- Raising Awareness and knowledge
- Support Services
