Donation protected
My name is Sid Lokam and my partners for this fundraiser are Tommy Wyniemko, Shaun Doogal, and Resha Sheth. We are juniors at Cranbrook Kingswood High School in Michigan.
Over the winter break (Dec’19), I had the opportunity to intern/volunteer at a non-profit organization, Sankar Foundation Eye Hospitals in Visakhapatnam, a beach town on the east coast of India. Click here to see it on a map. The foundation is supported by donations from various corporations and individual donors from around the world to perform free surgeries for people who are extremely underprivileged and under-served from various rural areas in east India.
A big part of the foundation's activities is to conduct regular eye camps to identify patients with acute eye conditions. At the camp, the hospital identifies and screens potential patients that require eye surgery and takes them to the hospital to get them operated on.
Over a span of 12 days, I shadowed eye surgeons, interacted with patients that were part of eye camps conducted by the hospital in remote villages of India and much more. During my time there, I attended a couple of follow-up camps in which I was able to interact with some of the patients about their well-being post-surgery. Hearing their stories on how these surgeries have changed their lives really touched me.
Sankar foundation eye hospital's core value of "Service to Man is Service to God" resonates with my own personal values and beliefs.
I wanted to be able to make an impact in my own way. So I asked the foundation if there is anything I could do to help. I was informed of a new facility they are trying to get fully operational in another remote/tribal area of East India where access to proper eye care is extremely scarce. They are looking for donors, but also trying to get access to free medicines, eye lenses used in surgery, eye solutions and new or used equipment (many kinds of ophthalmic devices) among other things for this facility. This facility is in a place called Koraput, in Odisha state of India which is surrounded by many tribal villages. Click here to see it on Google Maps.
My classmate Tommy is super excited to join me on this journey. We have made it our personal goal to raise as much as we can for this new facility by spreading the word around my school and my community. We also plan to continue volunteering for them during the summer of 2020.
We both have worked in similar projects before, with Tommy spending 5 years volunteering at the WuZhong China orphanage in WuZhong, China. We both have a deep passion for community service, and we sincerely feel that it is rewarding for us to give our time to those less fortunate. We hope to do all we can to have a positive impact on our world.
We are:
- Raising Funds (please use this gofundme page to make a donation)
- Requesting eye doctors to donate time at this new facility.
- Looking for bio-medical companies and hospitals to donate items mentioned above.
Please do the needful. We are extremely grateful to you for reading this through.
See below for some more pictures.
Shadowed Surgeries:
Visited Villages for Follow ups:
Provisioned Prescribed Eye Glasses - Post Surgery:
Over the winter break (Dec’19), I had the opportunity to intern/volunteer at a non-profit organization, Sankar Foundation Eye Hospitals in Visakhapatnam, a beach town on the east coast of India. Click here to see it on a map. The foundation is supported by donations from various corporations and individual donors from around the world to perform free surgeries for people who are extremely underprivileged and under-served from various rural areas in east India.
A big part of the foundation's activities is to conduct regular eye camps to identify patients with acute eye conditions. At the camp, the hospital identifies and screens potential patients that require eye surgery and takes them to the hospital to get them operated on.
Over a span of 12 days, I shadowed eye surgeons, interacted with patients that were part of eye camps conducted by the hospital in remote villages of India and much more. During my time there, I attended a couple of follow-up camps in which I was able to interact with some of the patients about their well-being post-surgery. Hearing their stories on how these surgeries have changed their lives really touched me.
Sankar foundation eye hospital's core value of "Service to Man is Service to God" resonates with my own personal values and beliefs.
I wanted to be able to make an impact in my own way. So I asked the foundation if there is anything I could do to help. I was informed of a new facility they are trying to get fully operational in another remote/tribal area of East India where access to proper eye care is extremely scarce. They are looking for donors, but also trying to get access to free medicines, eye lenses used in surgery, eye solutions and new or used equipment (many kinds of ophthalmic devices) among other things for this facility. This facility is in a place called Koraput, in Odisha state of India which is surrounded by many tribal villages. Click here to see it on Google Maps.
My classmate Tommy is super excited to join me on this journey. We have made it our personal goal to raise as much as we can for this new facility by spreading the word around my school and my community. We also plan to continue volunteering for them during the summer of 2020.
We both have worked in similar projects before, with Tommy spending 5 years volunteering at the WuZhong China orphanage in WuZhong, China. We both have a deep passion for community service, and we sincerely feel that it is rewarding for us to give our time to those less fortunate. We hope to do all we can to have a positive impact on our world.
We are:
- Raising Funds (please use this gofundme page to make a donation)
- Requesting eye doctors to donate time at this new facility.
- Looking for bio-medical companies and hospitals to donate items mentioned above.
Please do the needful. We are extremely grateful to you for reading this through.
See below for some more pictures.
Shadowed Surgeries:
Visited Villages for Follow ups:
Provisioned Prescribed Eye Glasses - Post Surgery:
Co-organizers (4)
Siddharth Lokam
Organizer
Bloomfield Hills, MI
Shaun Doogal
Co-organizer
Resha Sheth
Co-organizer
Tommy Wyniemko
Co-organizer