Context
Liberia faces a debilitating lack of human resources in the health field generally, as well as access to affordable glasses and eyecare. There are only 2 practicing ophthalmologists serving a country with a population of 4.5 million. This project would address the lack of eye care and optical services. Corrected vision allows children to see the blackboard, thrive at school, pursue expanded job opportunities, and enjoy an enhanced quality of life,
From the end of the civil war in the 1990’s Liberia has been relatively stable politically, however the Ebola crisis of 2014 left the country in a weak economic situation with approximately 90% of the population living in poverty and 50% of the population living in rural areas cut off from basic services. Global aid organizations have tended to avoid Liberia, and this is the precisely why the work of this project is so critical.
Supported project
In 2020, the L'OCCITANE Foundation and L'OCCITANE USA are supporting GoodVision USA to provide affordable local access to sustainably produced eyeglasses and eye care referrals. Through a partnership with a Liberian NGO, Refuge Place International (RPI), the technical staff will train locally-based individuals as vision technicians to conduct optical trainings, operate rural optical outreaches for visual assessment and optical dispensing, implement a network of small urban optical stores throughout the country, develop a referral pathway to ophthalmic nurses (within RPI facilities and/or public medical facilities), and collaborate with the Liberian Ministry of Health to create a public awareness campaign on the importance of visual health and the contribution of eyeglass correction to quality of life.
Some figures
Budget 40.000 euros
Goal 314.000 beneficiaries
