Volunteer Abroad
The Global Impact Corps is a volunteer abroad program that places students and professionals with Unite For Sight’s local eye clinic partners. After completing global health training, Global Impact Fellow volunteers travel to one of the three country locations to support and assist the local eye doctors as they deliver eye care to patients living in extreme poverty.
Global Impact Fellows can also work with Unite For Sight to design and implement a global health research study in the Global Impact Lab. Primarily students, these research volunteers work with Unite For Sight, the partner eye clinic, and a university mentor, and they also are required to receive Institutional Review Board (IRB) approval. Global Impact Fellows complete and receive a Certificate in Global Health Research, preparing them for critical issues with research in the developing world. Many fellows go on to publish and present their findings at research conferences and in academic journals.
In India, volunteers have the option of participating in either Dhenkanal, Orissa, or in Patna, Bihar. In Dhenkanal, Global Impact Fellows work with Kalinga Eye Hospital and Research Centre (KEHRC), which was founded by social entrepreneur Sarang Samal. Kalinga Eye Hospital provides healthcare to the seven districts of central Orissa, which has a population of 7 million people. In Dhenkanal, Global Impact Fellows partake in NGO management programs while directly learning about sustainable health care. In Patna, fellows work alongside Dr. Satyajit Sinha (a cataract and glaucoma specialist), ophthalmologist Dr. Ajit Sinha, and Dr. Pooja Sinha (retina specialist) in the A.B. Eye Institute to provide free eye care to poor patients, free surgery at the charity clinic, and help at the Bihar Netraheen Parishad school for blind girls.
The Ghana program with Unite for Sight includes three eye clinics in Accra, one in Kumasi, and one in Tamale. Global Impact Fellows work with ophthalmic nurses and optometrists of the eye clinics to provide eye care in rural villages that are located 1–8 hours from each eye clinic. The patients receive eye care from the local eye doctors.
In Honduras, Global Impact Fellows work with Centro de Salud Integral Zoe, which is based in Tegucigalpa. Eye care outreaches are provided in remote villages, and Global Impact Fellow volunteers work alongside the local eye doctors to provide eye care to approximately 100 patients each day.
In August 2012, Unite For Sight finalized a partnership with Global eyeglasses, an online eyeglasses retailer. As part of this partnership Global Eyeglasses would provide Unite for Sight with 50 new prescription eyeglasses every month. Monthly donations of prescription eyeglasses will benefit those who live in poverty and have access to care through Unite For Sight’s programs.
Read more about this topic: Unite For Sight
Famous quotes containing the word volunteer:
“We should have an army so organized and so officered as to be capable in time of emergency, in cooperation with the National Militia, and under the provision of a proper national volunteer law, rapidly to expand into a force sufficient to resist all probable invasion from abroad and to furnish a respectable expeditionary force if necessary in the maintenance of our traditional American policy which bears the name of President Monroe.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)