CHENNAI: It’s 8 am. IIT Madras’ serene campus is punctuated with the chirping of birds, the chattering of students and screeching of monkeys.
Around 250 students wearing black t-shirts had gathered under a banyan tree near the Central Lecture Theatre inside the premises. Some held placards and banners bearing messages on the importance of eyesight.
India Vision Institute (IVI) joined hands with IIT-Madras’ BLINK Shaastra 2020 and organised an awareness walk on vision health and refractive error, a major cause of avoidable blindness in India.
The social initiative aims to empower and enable visually handicapped students and adults to forge their own path and achieve success in their lives and careers.
Minister for Tamil Official Language and Tamil Culture, K Pandiarajan; Australia’s Consul General in Chennai, Susan Grace, Ma Foi Foundation Managing Trustee Latha Pandiarajan, IVI CEO Vinod Daniel, and Anup Kumar, director, sales, The Ascott Limited, were a part of the event.
The participants were blindfolded and guided by kids from St Louis Institute For The Deaf and Blind to show how they overcome their disability and challenge. They walked a stretch of 800 m from CLT to the Himalaya mess complex.
“For prevention of avoidable blindness, IVI has worked through timely intervention in providing access to vision screenings and the provision of free spectacles in disadvantaged communities and remote areas. Our ‘Eye See & I Learn’ and ‘Eye See & I Work’ campaigns reach out to these key constituencies where services are lacking and most required — notably for children and adults,” said Vinod Daniel, CEO and managing trustee of IVI, founded in 2012.
IVI’s Walk in the Dark campaigns have previously been held in Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Delhi, Mumbai, Goa, Kolkata and Aizwal in Mizoram.
This is the second one in Chennai. “IVI provides access to vision screening and a pair of glasses to the needy.
Till date, IVI has organised 670 vision screening programmes in and around Chennai and other cities across India. Over 2,62,895 individuals from the underprivileged communities (including over 2,00,726 children) were screened and free spectacles were distributed to 42,816 individuals (including 21,962 children),” said Vinod.
“It was challenging to walk blindfolded. I wonder how the visually-impaired do it every day effortlessly. They’re truly blessed with other sharp sensory responses. I’m sure that if all we need is an access to a pair of glasses then we can surely prevent blindness by spreading the message among the poor,” said Suresh Menon, a participant. The non-profit trust aims to spread awareness and encourage the parents to get their children’s eyes tested to avoid blindness and for a better future.