Light in Sight

What is cataracts?

Cataracts is a disease that causes blurry, hazy and loss in color vision that gives a hard time doing daily activities mostly at night such as driving, cooking, taking notes, watching or even walking. Cataracts are a very common disease that occurs mostly because of aging. Having cataracts doesn’t only affect you but your family and surroundings. There are many victims of cataracts in Africa that deal with this disease due to their lack of health professionals and education.

Who am I?

My name is Nilufer Ibis. I am a junior in East Providence High School. Light in Sight is a social service and civic engagement project aiming at funding the treatment of 50-100 cataract patients in Africa while also raising awareness to the illness itself as well as the inequity that people of Africa faces in the modern era. Cataracts are an easily treatable condition and millions of people in underserved countries of the world do not have access to cataracts treatment for reasons varying from lack of access to medical facilities to lack of awareness. This project is for the victims of cataracts in Mali, Africa.

What am I doing?

• I am currently in the process of reaching out to libraries, non-profits and other communities as well as public figures to raise awareness of the cataract problem that Africa faces and to encourage them to donate to this cause.
• I will use social media to reach out to as many people as possible to this end.
• I am blessed by the strong support of my wonderful East Providence High School leadership, especially Principal Black. I will use all the resources and opportunities they provide to this end.
• I am an artist and am currently preparing an artwork to benefit this project. My goal is to sell its canvas prints on public spaces while also gifting them to people who donate at least one surgery ($100).
• I will reach out to eye clinics to ask their support for this cause.

How Can You Help?

• Help spread awareness.
• Share this link with others and ask them to support my project.
• Donations are one of the best ways to show your support for my project. $100 is less than the money many people spend on coffee every month. Just imagine how much it means to a person to see his/her family and sunset again.
• Your feedback and suggestions are extremely important. Please, let me know what else I can do and how you can help me do what I do better.

Why Embrace Relief?

I have done an extensive online search on non-profits fundraising for cataracts surgery. After a thorough analysis, I agreed on the possibility of two non-profits: Embrace Relief and ### Foundation. I chose Embrace Relief for the following reasons above other non-profits and ### for the following reasons:

• Embrace Relief and ### were the only two non-profits specifying what our donations cover while the others were not clear.
• ### was substantially cheaper but upon research, I found out that the donation of a single cataracts surgery would only cover the material costs. The real cost of the surgery was the human cost, cost of travel, cost of making the surgery available locally. ### does other donation drives to cover the non-material costs.
• Embrace Relief has a very clear formula. $100 covers pre-op, surgery, post-op medicine, two post-op visits, the eye check-ups of 15 other people.
• I had reached out to ### and Embrace Relief both. While ### was not really helpful, Ms. Dana Coppola of Embrace Relief has been tirelessly working to help me start up a successful fundraiser project.

If you have any inquiries or suggestions, you may reach out to me at [email protected] or via my Facebook and X (Formerly, Twitter) Accounts.