Sightsavers global

Talla

Home of our global advocacy and policy centre, detailed information on our programme work and library of professional resources.

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Sightsavers in your country

(UAE) دولة الإمارات العربية المتحدة

Sverige

Norge

What we do

We work to eliminate avoidable blindness and help bring about equality for people with disabilities. In other words, we:

Help blind people to see

Prevent others from going blind unnecessarily

Support people to live independently if their sight loss can’t be undone

The reasons behind avoidable blindness run deeper than the eye diseases that cause them. They result from – and lead to – poverty, and are often accompanied by social exclusion and early death. So, instead of slapping a sticking-plaster on the problem, we work to ensure that people who are visually impaired or blind have access to preventive, curative and rehabilitative services without financial hardship.

Our approach

Support equality

We support local organisations, governments and schools to train specialist teaching staff. Every year we supply low vision aids like glasses, braille kits and learning tools to people who need them, and educate communities to eliminate the stigma around visual impairment and blindness. We also support people who are visually impaired or blind to get an education, earn an income and live independently.

Campaign for change

We work to influence governments, local organisations and businesses to strengthen the systems needed to solve problems that cause avoidable blindness, including those which most of us take for granted – like access to clean water and sanitation. We campaign to extend the outreach of preventive, curative and rehabilitative services to areas where they don’t exist, and help ensure that timely support is provided to people who need it.

Prevent blindness and restoring sight

We promote eye health by supporting our partners to conduct millions of eye examinations every year. We refer people for eye treatment and eye operations; distribute medicines to prevent blindness; fund eye operations for people who need them, and train eye care workers and surgeons to enable them to help people who are blind or visually impaired.

Where we work