Working with VAO

Across Africa and India, poor sight still remains a severe disability for millions of adults and children. This disability is compounded by a lack of both available and affordable eye tests and spectacles. In countries where education can be the difference between escaping the poverty trap or not, being able to read the chalkboard or textbook takes on an even greater significance – which is why Vision Aid Overseas work is so important, and we are privileged to help them.

Who is Vision Aid Overseas?

• Vision Aid Overseas (VAO) is a charity that sends teams of professionally qualified optometrists and dispensing opticians abroad to establish clinics, provide eye tests and dispense spectacles. 
• They were founded in 1985 after a visit by a team of optometrists to an eye camp in Tanzania.
• Since 1985 they have provided 600,000 eye tests and given 300,000 people the ability to see with a pair of spectacles.
• Essential to the success of VAO are the recycling schemes that are run through optician’s practices. These give UK optical consumers the opportunity to donate their old spectacles to people in the developing world.

Why is their work so vital to so many?
It’s not just children who are suffering because of poor eyesight. For adults and the elderly, poor eyesight limits their availability to work and earn an income, desperately needed for basic survival. Therefore a pair of glasses, so easily obtained and disposed of in the UK, becomes a precious commodity that can transform the lives of millions across the world.

Our involvement since 1997
For over 20 years, DX has been a market-leading carrier for the optical industry. This expertise allowed us to form a unique pro bono partnership with VAO in 1997 to provide them with a UK nationwide delivery service, supporting their commitment to provide the basic gift of good sight in the developing world. And it is a commitment we continue to support by collecting up to 20,000 pairs of spectacles each week from optician’s practices throughout the UK and delivering them to VAO offices.

“DX are absolutely critical to VAO’s ongoing work. We’ve been working with them since 1997 and it’s difficult to see how we would function without their support. Each year they collect and deliver over a million pairs of spectacles.”

Jeremy Jalie, Vision Aid Overseas