Sight Savers America delivers clearer outlook

Karlie Madere can take her own notes for the first time at South Terrebonne High School.

Thanks to a partnership between Sight Savers America and the Lions Club, five legally blind children were the recipients of vision aids that will significantly improve their quality of life.

“There are various levels of legal blindness – mild, moderate and severe,” SSA founder and CEO Jeff Haddox said. “If you look at your parent’s face and your vision is that poor, you’re not going to see much detail. This is a life-changing event.”

SSA, based out of Birmingham, Ala., distributed five closed-circuit televisions (CCTV) to legally blind children ranging from 7 to 16 in age last Wednesday at the Bourg Lions Club.

“I hope that this computer screen will help me so that I can sit in the back of the class and I won’t have to get notes copied for me anymore,” Madere, 16, said. “I can copy them myself.”

Seven-year-old Alyssa Foret attends Pointe aux Chenes Elementary, where she is able to use the parish’s magnification equipment to help with reading books and the blackboard.

Now, she will have her own CCTV at home, which she can use to read, draw pictures, watch regular television or just look at different things around the room – tasks that strained her eyes before last week.

“The more that the students are able to use equipment more proficiently then they’ll be more independent,” said Johnie Crochet, who teaches visually impaired students in Terrebonne Parish.

“That’s the goal of all students: to be independent learners. So this will enable [Alyssa] to do that at home. So she won’t have to say, ‘Mom, help me do this, help me do that.'”

The two-part device includes a computer monitor and an adjustable camera, which has the capability to magnify the object up to 75 times its original size, giving the children the chance to relax while they study.

“With a CCTV, they sit back in their chair,” Haddox said. “They’ll read for an hour … two hours, instead of 10 minutes. You’re enhancing their education tremendously because you’re allowing them to spend a lot more time doing the reading and studying they need to do.”

SSA operates exclusively on grants and donations. After securing the funds, the organization schedules low-vision assessments with a doctor to determine what equipment will best fit the child’s needs. In Bourg, the five prescreened youth received CCTVs (approximately $2,400 each), but Haddox said sometimes an eye exam and a pair of glasses are all it takes to improve a child’s life.

The Lions Club used remaining Hurricane Katrina grants from Lions Club International to help upward of 100 children in the area, said Bob Ebberman, who is in charge of public relations at the Bourg establishment.

SSA will return in a couple of months to help children in Lafourche Parish, among other south Louisiana areas, Haddox said.

Haddox was a research scientist for 20 years before he decided to help 11 youngsters in Birmingham who did not know they even needed glasses.

“It kind of just took on its own momentum from there,” he said. “It went from 11 to a few hundred, to a few thousand to 30,000. Now it’s about 40,000.”

His wife Margie is the director of the rehabilitation department. At the Lions Club, she went over the paperwork with the parents, and said she contacts each family two weeks after they receive the machine and at least two times per year to check up on the machine, which SSA will service until the children turn 19.

“We want to make sure that each child that we help has the same abilities to keep up with school that a child with 20/20 vision has,” Mrs. Haddox said.

Alyssa Foret, 7, draws a picture under the camera of her new CCTV while Sight Savers America’s visual rehab coordinator Clint Wells watches at the Bourg Lions Club. ERIC BESSON