Fundraising
Seeing is Believing is delighted to be the beneficiary of the 2010 Standard Chartered Great City Race, receiving £5 from each £25 entry fee which will be matched by Standard Chartered Bank.
Seeing is Believing (SiB) is a global initiative to help tackle avoidable blindness. To date, SiB has raised over US$ 17 million for blindness initiatives and plans to raise a further US$ 20 million by 2013. This will fund the development of sustainable eye care services in 20 less-advantaged urban areas in the developing world, giving poor, marginalised populations access to cataract surgery, preventative treatment, screening, and specialised medical interventions.
SiB is a collaborative partnership between Standard Chartered Bank and the International Agency f or Prevention of Blindness (IAPB), the leading umbrella organisation for NGOs working in the field of eye care. Together with the World Health Organisation, the IAPB launched the ‘Vision 2020 – The Right to Sight’, a global campaign which aims to eliminate avoidable blindness by 2020. SiB is the single largest contribut or to the development of Vision 2020 programmes
Full details of SiB can be found at www.seeingisbelieving.org.uk
As part of the Seeing is Believing programme, Standard Chartered Bank pledges to match all donations until the target of US$ 20 million is reached. This will double the impact of all funds raised. Seeing is Believing would like to encourage as many runners as possible to raise additional funds for this worthy cause by raising your own race sponsorship.
Seeing is Believing would like to encourage as many runners as possible to raise additional funds for this worthy cause by raising your own race sponsorship. Information on how to do this will be available very shortly.
According to WHO estimates, a person goes blind every five seconds; a child goes blind every minute; 60% of children die within one year of going blind. Without effective, major intervention, the number of blind people worldwide is projected to increase to 76 million by 2020.
Yet 75% of blindness is avoidable given the right treatment, which means that over 33 million people around the world are blind as a result of conditions that could either have been prevented or could be cured. And a total of 314 million suffer from some serious form of visual impairment.
Avoidable blindness is not just a health issue, it is an economic issue – it can deprive those affected of education and a job, rendering them economically dependent. The consequences can also be devastating for their families and communities: children are removed from schools to permanently care for their relatives; scarce social resources are employed to deal with chronic disabilities; communities are deprived of the productivity of both the cared for and the carers. Addressing avoidable blindness therefore has a multiplier effect.
Saving sight is also the single most cost effective health intervention: sight-preserving vitamin A tablets cost as little as 5 cents, cataract operations cost as little as USD 30. It can make a difference between a lifetime of exclusion, neglect and dependence, and freedom to access education, employment and the independence we take for granted.
