To help up to 130 million Teenagers see clearly in Class

I’m a physicist from Oxford with a passion for inventing. In 1985, I created a revolutionary lens that allows users to easily adjust its focus, providing high-quality optics at a very low cost. When I used the lens myself, I was able to perfectly correct my short-sightedness without needing an optician or eye test. Realizing its potential, I reached out to the World Health Organization and learned that over a billion people worldwide need glasses. I told them I could help solve that problem, and Dr. Bjorn Thylefors, a WHO official, encouraged me to pursue it. He later helped us secure funding for clinical trials, which have proved that self-prescription with my sort of lens is highly effective.

Some years later, a friend at the World Bank asked if my lenses could help children, leading to a study involving 1,500 short-sighted teenagers in the U.S. and China. The results were remarkable: over 90% of the teenagers achieved clear vision in class. With 130 million short-sighted teenagers around the world in need of eyewear, I am determined to help as many of them as possible. My self-prescription technology has now gained attention for augmented reality applications, but its original purpose was to bring clear vision to very many millions of people who need but do not have glasses.

A group of us who have worked on this technology and its application have now formed Teen Vision, a social enterprise. Over time we will make and deliver our glasses to as many of the 130 million teenagers as possible. Our work started with our first product.

[See above] Henry is the first man in the world to have worn our glasses

Luis is a teenager who was given our glasses so that he could read the board in class

Initial deployment of tens of thousands of these first glasses has shown us that they now need a little further development to go to mass production and delivery. Teen Vision will use the funds we raise to carry out those crucial next steps, so that we can get to delivery at scale.

Teenagers whose education is hampered by poor vision in class have greatly reduced prospects in later life, and our simple intervention will therefore be very important for them. So for every donation we receive, the aim of getting everyone in class to see clearly gets that much closer.

With your support, we can change that and ensure that millions of children and teenagers around the world can see clearly in school and beyond.