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Nov 11, 2009 11:04 pm US/Central
Forward-Looking Charity Giving The Gift Of Vision
Reporting
Jack Fink
DALLAS (CBS 11 / TXA 21) ―
The statistics are alarming. About 25 percent of Dallas/Fort Worth area children have some kind of vision problem, and most aren't wearing glasses.
So for the past year, a Dallas-based charity has been working on a solution, and it's changing students lives
Wilbert Reyes-Cruz had a rough start at Dallas' Brashear Elementary School. His mother, Dennylliam Reyes-Cruz says, "He was held back in second grade because he couldn't read and his letters were backwards."
At first his mother, a teacher at the same school, thought he just didn't like to read.
But tests showed Wilbert needed glasses. Reyes-Cruz says, "I just felt guilty.. I didn't realize it in my own children."
He received a free pair of eyeglasses from the
Essilor Vision Foundation, which has provided more than five thousand glasses to children in the DFW area since last year.
And Wilbert says he loves his glasses, "They look cool."
Foundation member Patrick Esquerre, the creator of the La Madeline restaurant chain, helped organize the program.
He says about 100,000 students in the DFW area have some kind of vision problem, and that most of them go uncorrected.
Foundation President and CEO Ed Fjordbak says it's a problem they intend to solve because the stakes are high for students. "Good vision has a link to high performance. Low vision has a link to low performance."
Both Wilbert and his mom say the glasses are just what the doctor ordered. "After he got his glasses, he's reading fluently, it was just coming through. He's acing his tests, it's incredible" says Dennylliam.
Wilbert says, "It feels great. I don't get any more bad grades."
Those who developed the program say they were stunned to find out some of the obstacles the children faced in getting the eyeglasses."
The foundation says even when parents received vouchers for free glasses, half wouldn't take their children to see the doctor.
So they've come to the schools to fill eyeglass prescriptions and let kids select their frames.
And with the help of the Alcon company in Fort Worth, they've expanded to the Everman ISD, where a clinic and lab on wheels makes glasses in an hour.
Back at Brashear Elementary, Principal Derrick Batts says the 50 students who received glasses last year have shown dramatic improvement. "A number of those grade level students are now commendable performers, where as the year before, they were barely making grade level. It has been an extreme positive effect."
"It's a blessing to me, a blessing to the school, and to the community" says Reyes-Cruz.
The Essilor Vision Foundation hopes to expand the program across Texas and eventually nationwide.
(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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