Meet Jordan Kassalow

© Epic, 2010

 Prized for Founding Vision Spring

"A little investment in a pair of glasses goes a long way." 

As a young optometry student, Jordan Kassalow traveled to rural Mexico with an organization that provided eye care to under-served populations.  While there, he was stunned to find that many of the patients' eye problems could instantly be fixed with simple reading glasses--the kind that you can easily buy for $10 at most grocery stores in the United States.  Jordan realized that there must be millions of people with the same predicament around the world, and he wanted to help.  Seventeen years later, Jordan created an organization to do just that.  

In 2001, Jordan created Scojo Foundation (later renamed VisionSpring).  The organization aimed to make affordable eye exams and eyeglasses available, particularly to the poor.  Using a business in a bag model, VisionSpring armed rural women with affordable business start-up kits and vision screening training.  These new vision entrepreneurs then spread out to conduct vision tests, sell reading glasses, and refer customers who need prescription lenses to a VisionSpring optometrist or partner eye institution. 

From its inception, VisionSpring has been a revolutionary organization.  The results are instantaneous and impact is significant.  A recent study by the University of Michigan, showed that on average VisionSpring's customers experience 35% increased productivity.  That's like adding two and a half extra work days to the user's week!  For the rural poor, this is a life-changing investment. 

To date, VisionSpring has expanded to work with ten partners on four continents.  They have trained more that 9,000 vision entrepreneurs and sold over 613,000 pairs of glasses. 

Sources

VisionSpring Website

Acumen Fund Portfolio Page

Check Out This Video

VisionSpring 2009 Global Video

Meet Paul Farmer

© Epic, 2010

Prized for Co-Founding Partners in Health

"This could be very simple: the well should take care of the sick."

Between his undergraduate studies and medical school, Paul Farmer decided to spend one year in Haiti learning about the local people and their health care systems.  During his his time at Duke, he had met many Haitian farmers as he visited tobacco plantations and migrant labor camps not far from the university.  After seeing their awful living conditions in the US, reading all he could about Haiti, and writing papers on Haitian topics, Paul was ready to see the country for himself.

Paul remembers a poignant moment while volunteering at a hospital in Haiti.  He was speaking with a doctor who was about to return to the US.  The doctor was a good man who loved the Haitian people, but he couldn't wait to get out of Haiti and back to his home.  "I realized, hearing him talk, that something had happened to me already," Paul later reflected.  "He was leaving Haiti, really leaving in body and mind, and I realized I was going to have trouble with that."  Later that same day, Paul frantically gathered money to pay for a blood transfusion to treat a pregnant woman with a severe case of malaria.  Despite his efforts, the money was too little too late.  The woman died.  Paul determined then to build his own hospital in Haiti, one that cared for Haiti's poor without regard to payment.

In 1984, Paul returned to the Harvard University to begin joint degrees in anthropology and medicine.  But he couldn't stay away from Haiti, even while working on two doctorate degrees.  Somehow he managed to start the Clinique Bon Sauveur in 1985 in Haiti, while still securing impressive grades at Harvard.  

In 1987, as he continued working towards his degrees, Paul co-founded Partners in Health or PIH, an initiative originally created to support health-related activities in Cange, Haiti.  PIH built clinics and schools, provided training for health care workers, organized mobile screening units, and  researched health issues in rural Haiti.  The organization's mission is both medical and moral: whatever it takes, meaning that when a person is sick, PIH is committed to use any and all means at their disposal to make the person well.  "Just as we would do if a member of our own family--or we ourselves--were ill," explains PIH's website.   

Today PIH has expanded to become a global health care system for the poor.   As of 2009, the organization boasts 49 health centers and hospitals in 11 countries with 11,000 employees committed to doing whatever it takes.

Sources
Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder
Partners in Health Website

Check Out This Video
Paul Farmer's This I Believe Video

Meet G. Venkataswamy

© Epic, 2010

Prized for Founding Aravind Eye Care

"Intelligence and capability are not enough.  There must be the joy of doing something beautiful." 

When G. Venkataswamy, affectionately known as Dr. V, retired at the age of 58, he didn't really retire.  Instead, he was thinking about McDonald's assembly lines and how they related to opthamology, his life's work.  What if you applied the assembly line approach to create more affordable eye care? he wondered.  Passionately believing that good vision is crucial to creating economic stability, he mortgaged his home to establish a twelve-bed eye hospital for Southern India's poor.

That was the beginning of Aravind Eye Care System, which has grown to become the largest and most productive eye care system in the world.  Using an assembly line approach, Dr. V figured out how to streamline eye care into a smooth, efficient, and cost-effective system.  Dr. V also pioneered the idea of mass free eye camps for the poor.  The results are staggering: Aravind doctors perform 2,200 surgeries annually compared to 250 surgeries per year in nearby hospitals. 

But with the high cost of replacement lenses ($150 a pair), Dr. V's ability to perform surgeries was limited.  In 1992, he collaborated with David Green to create Aurolab,  a company that uses a creative new technology to manufacture lenses, bringing down the cost to just $5 per pair.  Aravind uses a sliding price scale to determine the amount patients pay.  Those who can afford to pay the full price of $10 subsidize the 70% who can't. 

Though Dr. V died in 2006, after performing over 100,000 successful eye surgeries, his legend lives on in the Aravind Eye Care System.   Today  there are five Aravind Eye Hospitals in India, serving more than 2 million patients and  performing more than 270,000 surgeries a year.

Sources

Aravind Website

ASCRS Website
My Hero Project Website 

PBS New Heroes Website

Check Out This Video

PBS NewsHour: Hospital Provides Top Eye Care for All Patients