Eyeglasses are a powerful social and economic development tool. VisionSpring provides affordable eyeglasses, vision screening, and training so that nonprofits, social entrepreneurs, government agencies, and corporate clients can bring the wonder of clear vision to their communities.
A student in Lucknow, India, received her first pair of eyeglasses through VisionSpring’s school vision screening program, See to Learn. She can now see the blackboard, and is more confident doing her homework.
Accelerate the uptake of affordable eyeglasses for low-income earners and learners to realize their full productivity, income-earning potential, and well-being; and create durable market-based access for vision correction.
Creating many more points of sale through strategic partnerships and distribution models that integrate eyeglasses into livelihoods, education, road safety, health, and mobile banking programs and services.
Founder, VisionSpring
Early in his training as an optometrist, Jordan Kassalow took part in a medical mission to rural Mexico. Thousands of people who had no local access to vision services stood in line to have their eyes checked by the visitors. One was a 52-year-old weaver whose new reading glasses enabled her to go back to the work she had given up as her vision worsened, and begin earning income again. Another was a young boy assumed to be blind, who in fact only needed strong eyeglasses. Jordan realized that eyeglasses might be the difference to millions of people’s ability to work, learn, and participate in their societies. There had to be a way to make that difference in a way more locally rooted and sustainable than international medical missions. Working to develop that solution, he studied at the Aravind eye hospital in India, led Helen Keller International’s work on river blindness, and founded the National Council on Foreign Relations’ Global Health Policy Program. In 2001, he launched the organization that became VisionSpring, to train and employ local people to conduct basic eye exams and sell affordable eyeglasses in their communities.
Jordan has transitioned to a board member of VisionSpring and Ella Gudwin, former SVP of Strategy and Program Development at Americares, became President in 2015.
Since 2015, VisionSpring has tripled its impact to reach 1.3 million people annually with eyeglasses in eight countries. Since inception, VisionSpring has sold eyeglasses to 6.9 million customers, with more than 50 percent as first-time wearers, unlocking $1.5 billion in economic impact, as each pair of eyeglasses generates an average $216 increase in annual income over a two-year period for their recipient. In 2018, VisionSpring published the results of a randomized control trial in The Lancet Global Health. Conducted in the tea estates of Assam, India, the RCT demonstrated a 22 percent increase in productivity among tea pickers who acquired their first pair of reading glasses. Additional studies underway reveal commensurate increases in income for first-time wearers of reading glasses. In 2019, VisionSpring was inducted into the Million Lives Club by the International Development Innovation Alliance as a Vanguard member and won the Prince Michael International Road Safety Award for Drive Safe India.
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