Elkhart Education Foundation
Kindness to Prevent Blindness 2021Elkhart Education Foundation
Kindness to Prevent Blindness 2021
According to a recent journal article, regular vision screenings and follow up care resulted in improved academic and behavioral outcomes for the 85% of at-risk students that had undetected/untreated vision problems. The same article found that 40% to 67% of children identified with vision problems during typical school screenings never receive the follow up care recommended by vision care professionals.
Kindness to Prevent Blindness (KTPB) 2021 is an expansion of a successful pilot program that began in Elkhart County, and provides medical eye exams and distributes eyeglasses to area students through a mobile clinic owned by the Elkhart Education Foundation and operated by Boling Vision Center. Staffed by ophthalmologists and optometrists who donate their time, KTPB provided over 1445 pairs of glasses to students from 60 different schools in St. Joseph and Elkhart Counties in the 2019/2020 school year, up from 600 pairs representing 18 schools just the year before.
The focus of the grant request for the Kindness to Prevent Blindness 2021 campaign was to sustain KTPB’s work with students in St. Joseph County. Given the continued success and growth of the program in year two, and the Foundation‘s stated mission to improve quality of life in the community through initiatives including education and healthcare, the request was granted.
