Clinic Day One: EyeVan debuts & our team bonds!

Our team members made it to beautiful (and sunny!) San Diego safely yesterday. While still learning each other's names, we jumped right into action early this morning in the gym at the Camacho Recreation Center in the National City area of town.  Thanks to our local organizer, Dottie, and her awesome local volunteers, everything was impeccably organized and ready for us to start.

Not only was the excitement high with EyeVan's first day ever producing glasses on site at a OneSight clinic, but of the 215 local school children our team tested and examined today, 210 kids needed eyeglasses! It was immediately obvious that there is great need for prescription eyeglasses for these children. We saw an unbeliveable amount of high prescriptions like +7.00s, +9.00s, +12.00s! This means so many of them are facing every day of their critical learning years with the disadvantage of being legally blind!

The kids had a beautiful selection of shiny new frames to choose from (Oakley, Ray-Ban and more!), so we know they will happily wear their COOL new glasses to school. The lenses and frames eventually went outside where EyeVan is parked, and our lab expert team members began creating complete new eyeglasses that we will deliver starting tomorrow. It was amazing to finally get to watch this happen after nearly a year and a half of planning and build out that it took for the OneSight team to bring EyeVan to life.

While we look forward to delivering all the new eyewear in the next couple of days, we're especially excited to visit 6th grader, Andrew Sanchez, to deliver his glasses. He has been trying to compensate for his inability to see at school by always sitting at the front of the class and wearing his dad's prescription glasses because Andrew wore his old ones until they fell apart a year ago. This week, he will have handsome, sturdy new glasses made just for his own vision needs, thanks to OneSight and EyeVan!

We also saw kids like brother and sister Martin, 11, and Jennifer Mojean, 8, whose parents lack insurance for exams and glasses. Like all the kids we saw today, they were so well mannered and grateful and in desperate need of help to see the world around them everyday. And soon, Martin will not have to rely on one "good" eye to make up for the -5 vision in his other eye!

Thank you to everyone who has donated to support OneSight and our clinic. This is what you have made possible. For anyone wishing to donate to support our team's work, just click on the link above to go to our  secure OneSight fund raising Web site. Stay tuned to our blog for more news, pics and stories this week!