dmc student led project “glasses for africa”
Dubai Men’s College students in the Diploma program have collected almost fifty pairs of unwanted eye glasses for people in Africa blighted by poor eyesight who, through poverty or unavailability of spectacles in own their countries would otherwise have no means of having their vision corrected.
The project first came about when their English teacher, Wendy Fox, was given a leaflet about a charity called “Vision Aid Overseas” when she visited an optician’s in the UK this summer. Back in the UAE, Wendy asked her students to read and answer questions about the “Vision Aid Overseas” website in order to improve their sense of global awareness.
However, the students were so touched by the plight of visually challenged people in developing countries that they decided they really wanted to do something to help. The spectacles will now be sent to the “Vision Aid Overseas” headquarters near London to be cleaned and graded according to the strength of the lenses and finally they will be sent to either Burkino Faso, Ethiopia, Ghana, Malawi, Sierra Leone, Uganda or Zambia where, with the help of these donated glasses, people with poor eyesight will, possibly for the first time in their lives, be able to learn, work and achieve a quality of life otherwise completely unattainable.
Wendy Fox expressed her appreciation of the students’ initiative saying, “I was impressed with the students’ reaction and it definitely reflected their dedication to help others in any format. When I introduced the issue to them I wasn’t expecting what they did but they always surprise me with their exceptional manners.”
