Empower women in rural India to combat blindness

We would like to thank our GlobalGiving donors once again for their incredible support of our work empowering young women and fighting blindness during a critical time. Due to the current resurgence of Covid-19 across Asia, 2021 has been a particularly challenging time in India.  Many health, education, and community services facilities have been forced to reduce services or close down their activities altogether, thus reducing their revenue.  We were very concerned about how reduced revenue at our vision clinics would affect the financial support of the 25 young women trained as Certified Opthalmic Paradmedics through Dr. Schroff's Charity Eye Hospital.

The Jiti Foundation is excited to announce that the generous support of our donors over the spring and summer enabled us to send a donation of $25,000 that was desperately needed to pay for paramedic salaries in light of revenue reductions.  This will allow the young women trained in the COP program to continue their careers as paramedics despite the emergency situation across the country. 

To get an understanding of how important this ongoing support is for these young women, we want to introduce you to Pooja. at Thanabhavan Vision center in Saharanpur. Extremely hard working and purposeful, Pooja is one of our vision technicians, managing Thanabhawan vision center in Saharanpur, Uttar Pradesh -- the Jiti Foundation’s first supported vision center. According to Pooja, the COP program brought a drastic change in the way her family, and the people living in their neighborhood, thought about the education of girls and the potential for young women's lives. She is the only young woman from her village who travels out of her village every day to go to work. Before the Covid-19 lockdown period, she used to ride her own scooter to the center; which gave her tremendous confidence!  Now she is performing her duties at the center, observing all the Covid-19 safety protocols. Realizing her responsibilities towards the economic conditions of her family, she not only contributes towards the running of the household, but also funds the studies of her younger brother so he can complete his education.

Looking ahead, we are hopeful that as India's Covid-19 situation stabilizes again, the increased flow of patients back to the vision centers will mean stabilized revenues to pay for salaries and the Jiti Foundation can once again provide funding for clinic expansion.  In the meantime, we thank you for preserving the careers of the young women already trained and supporting them as role models to young girls as well as to their communities and families.  The vision centers and their paramedic staff have provided a lifeline to their communities during a time when access to vision care has been exceedingly difficult.

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