Supported Charity


In 2008 we are proud to be supporting Sightsavers International by donating £1 for every projector, screen or lamp we sell. We will donate over £10,000 by the end of 2008, which will pay for over 370 children to have cataract operations to have their sight restored.

Some facts about childhood blindness in developing countries:
- There are 1.4 million children who are blind
- 90% of children who are blind don't go to school
- Within two years of becoming blind, 50% of children die
- It costs just £27 for a child cataract operation
- It costs just 31p to prevent blindness from two of its biggest causes: river blindness and trachoma

Who are Sightsavers International?
For over 50 years Sightsavers International has been working to combat blindness in developing countries, restoring sight through specialist treatment and eye care and are currently working in over 30 countries throughout Asia, Africa and the Caribbean. They also support people who are irreversibly blind by providing education, counselling and training. They help the people who need it most - those living in poverty in some of the world's poorest countries.

Rebuilding lives
Teaching basic daily living skills is one of the key ways of enabling people who are irreversibly blind to live with some kind of independence. This could include making their way around their town or village with a white cane, preparing food, dressing themselves or taking care of their own personal hygiene. Enabling people to do these kinds of simple activities means that they will require less assistance from their family and, hopefully, it will help to increase their confidence.

Being blind shouldn't mean that people are prevented from providing for themselves and their families. With some vocational training, there are a variety of jobs that they can do, from farming to setting up small businesses, from shopkeeping to craft production.

Children and education
Fewer than ten per cent of children who are blind or have low vision receive any kind of formal schooling. This fuels a cycle of illiteracy and poverty, leaving people who are blind as one of the most vulnerable and excluded groups in the world. Sightsavers supports the principle of inclusive education. This is where children who are blind and visually impaired are included in the mainstream education system. Sightsavers works with children, teachers and parents, as well as governments, to make inclusion work and is a member of the Global Campaign for Education which advocates for the right of every child everywhere to go to school.

What lies ahead?
It has been estimated that the number of blind people in the world will increase from 44 million in 2000 to 76 million by 2020, if action is not taken to reduce blindness. The economic cost of this blindness is immense, and developing countries could potentially achieve a £192 billion boost in economic productivity over the next 20 years if they adopt appropriate measures to reduce blindness.

Sightsaver success
Working with partners last year, Sightsavers helped to :

- Treat over 14.2 million people for potentially blinding conditions
- Carry out 238,514 cataract operations
- Train 59,945 primary eye care workers