Over 300 million people worldwide have visual handicaps due to eyesight problems, simply because they do not have access to corrective glasses. Furthermore, according to Vision Council of America, as many as one out of three children under the age of five suffer from vitamin A deficiency in El Salvador. This deficiency can result in a number of eye problems, including blindness. Visual problems can produce changes in an individual’s psychological condition, such as frustration, sadness, lower self-esteem, and attention deficit. Visual deficiencies often place individuals, their families and society as a whole at an economic disadvantage.
To change the lives of under-privileged children, SCF funded construction of a fully equipped eye clinic and optics shop in rural Fudem. The eye clinic benefits thousands by providing basic health education, vision exams, precisely fitted eyeglasses, and glaucoma testing to the agricultural workers living within communities which the government has identified as being areas of extreme poverty.