This year’s World Economic Forum in Davos brought attention to the challenge of providing eye care to the 1 in 3 people who cannot see the world clearly. During the global event, our Eye Mitra™ program was featured.
The challenge to provide eye care to the 1 in 3 people who cannot see the world clearly can sometimes seem insurmountable. 90% of people who still suffer from uncorrected poor vision live in developing countries where access to eye care professionals and awareness on the importance of vision is limited.
Anchored by our mission to improve lives by improving sight, we are focused on serving the 2.7 billion suffering from uncorrected poor vision through three focus areas: inclusive business, strategic philanthropy, awareness & advocacy.
At this year’s World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, our flagship inclusive business program Eye Mitra™ – also the world’s largest rural optical network – was featured in a newly launched report called ‘Business as Unusual‘.
Developed by Yunus Social Business, Porticus, Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship, INSEAD and the Hoffmann Global Institute for Business & Society – together with a steering group of academics and practitioners, the report aims to shed more light on the nascent phenomenon of social intrapreneurship, based on quantitative experiments, interviews and studies to measure the transformative effect of corporate social business.
We are very happy and proud to see our Eye Mitra™ initiative as one of the examples of business as a force of good in the report launched at the recent World Economic Forum in Davos. We reaffirm our commitment to eliminate poor vision from the world by 2050.
“We are very happy and proud to see our Eye Mitra™ initiative as one of the examples of business as a force of good in the report launched at the recent World Economic Forum in Davos. We reaffirm our commitment to eliminate poor vision from the world by 2050,” said Jayanth Bhuvaraghan, Chief Mission Officer, Essilor International.
Out of 100 identified inclusive corporate-level initiatives, the Eye Mitra™ program was showcased as a prime example of business as a force for good, as it uses Essilor’s experience in ophthalmic optics to provide access to eye care services while investing in skills development and creating micro-entrepreneurs in rural communities. To read about Eye Mitra in the Business as Unusual report, please click here.
First launched in India in 2013, the Eye Mitra program trains young un- or under-employed men and women in rural and semi-urban areas to become primary vision care providers, creating access to and awareness of vision care, where it wasn’t available before. Its success in India has led to its expansion into other markets, like Bangladesh, Kenya and Indonesia in 2018, and China in 2017. Today, there are about 11,000 primary vision care providers around the world. To find out more about the Eye Mitra program, please click here.