“The gift from Ms Scott is an incredible acknowledgement of the power of a simple pair of eyeglasses to unlock earning, learning, safety and well-being for people vulnerable to poverty,” said VisionSpring’s chief executive Ella Gudwin, reported the Guardian.
MacKenzie Scott, a billionaire philanthropist and ex-wife of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has recently donated $15 million to the social enterprise VisionSpring. Reportedly, her donation to the organisation is the largest single private donation, which will help solve the uncorrected vision problem affecting millions in developing countries like Bangladesh, India, Ghana, Kenya and Uganda.
According to the report, VisionSpring works to provide glasses to hundreds of thousands of low-income tea, coffee, cocoa and artisan workers and farmers in the aforementioned list of countries. “The gift from Ms Scott is an incredible acknowledgement of the power of a simple pair of eyeglasses to unlock earning, learning, safety and well-being for people vulnerable to poverty,” said VisionSpring’s chief executive Ella Gudwin, reported the Guardian.
The announcement was also made on World Sight Day and VisionSpring’s $70 million Livelihoods in Focus campaign is estimated to help create more than $1 billion of new income among the farmers and artisans by helping them see more clearly. According to Gudwin, the campaign is a “multi-year journey” and aims to address the “massive vision care gap”.