Essilor Vision Foundation (EVF) recently hosted its largest event in two years, providing life-changing eye exams and glasses to over 300 students in Ft. Worth, Texas.

Traditionally, EVF hosts its annual Kids Vision Fest in Ft. Worth in early February. Hundreds of students from schools around the district come to the event to get free eye exams and glasses if needed.

Due to COVID, EVF changed the format of Kids Vision Fest this year. Instead of holding one big event, the Foundation’s Kids Vision for Life program visited three schools to provide on-site vision care to students. Some highlights include:

• 347 students got eye exams
• 252 needed glasses
• 293 pairs of glasses were ordered – 30 students had prescriptions of >+/- 4 and received two pairs

Despite the pandemic, the need for vision care remains. In fact, one in four schoolchildren in the U.S. has a vision problem that affects their ability to learn. Dylan was one of those students.

Dylan had glasses but they broke, and he was struggling without them. “Without my glasses, I can’t see. Whenever I read, the letters get blurry,” Dylan said. Reading and math are his favorite subjects and he noticed that without his glasses, he was getting the answers wrong. EVF gave Dylan a new pair of glasses the same day. “This is the best day ever!” he exclaimed.

“If a child can’t see properly they can’t learn,” school nurse Margarita Dorado says. “It’s such a joy when students put on their glasses and it’s like looking at a completely different world.”

Kids Vision for Life offers a solution to one of the main barriers low-children face – access to vision care – by bringing its mobile vision clinics to schools. Students get eye exams and, in many cases, finished prescription glasses the same day, all at no cost to their families.

Kids Vision for Life has made other adjustments to continue to serve during the pandemic including:

• Socially distant exam stations and with some processes such as frame selection moved out of the mobile clinic.
• Masks are required on site at all clinics for KVFL staff, doctors, volunteers and patients.
• Online registration where parents can sign up their children and submit a consent form so students can receive vision services at an EVF event.
• Electronic exam records to minimize touchpoints throughout the exam process. Using digital exam records also helps the Foundation deliver glasses to students more quickly.

Essilor Vision Foundation is dedicated to helping people in need have a better life through better sight.