Students provide used eyeglasses to those less fortunate

June 8, 2010

Optometry students at Ohio State University are taking strangers trash, and turning it into the gift of sight for the less fortunate.

The group, Students Volunteering Optometric Services to Humanity, is made of 95 students and takes eyeglasses that are dropped in Lions Club boxes around Columbus. They clean, sort and label discarded glasses - salvaging about 30 percent of what they find with what's left being melted down.

According to The Columbus Dispatch, the students take an annual mission trip to provide eyeglasses to those who might otherwise not be so lucky. This year, 26 students went to Guatemala.

"We have become such a rich society that we take for granted that anyone who needs glasses can get them," 23-year-old Mallor Kuchem told the news source. "The glasses we hand out change people's lives"

The lack of eye care in developing nations is a problem says Global Eye Care, a group dedicated to providing vision service to those in need. There are only 650 opthamaologists to treat 650 million African residents.