Eyeglasses Project

When my grandmother in Germany died, I got a box of old eyeglasses from my mother, which I took to Thailand and gave them to some villagers in North Thailand with poor eyesight. Back home I sent pictures with the recycled eyeglasses and tribal woman wearing them. The response is more eyeglasses being collected among friends and relatives. This quietly grew into a serious project and we receive and donate annually about 600 – 800 eyeglasses. We are not professional opticians, but we operate with a selective system that has proven quite well.

Each person wanting eyeglasses will get a lot of 10. The person can choose only one out of the 10, preferably the one that produces the best result. We repeat this process with different lots until finally there are 5-10 eyeglasses, out of them the person needing an eye-glass can choose only one and this eyeglass usually does fulfill the need. Most people find life changes because of their new eyeglasses. They can start to read again, work again and do things that they stopped doing to limited eye sight.

In the early days we went to villages to distribute the eye glasses. Nowadays we have “centers” where people come from faraway places in the mountains to get the eye glasses. Sometimes we take the eye glasses to refugee camps or very distant rural areas. Some of the eye glasses have even made it to the Sea Gypsy villages in South Thailand the Andaman Sea. We do still need many eye glasses and we are looking forward to receiving your old ones. But please do not send them to Thailand in parcels or by mail. The eye glasses are subject to very high import taxes according to the Thai Law.

If you have friends visiting Thailand have them hand carry the glasses to Thailand as this is the best and the cheapest way. You are most welcome to deliver your eye glasses personally and join us when we travel to various villages and distribute the glasses together.

Sponsored by Gold Smith Hess & Rickert, Germany

Click on image to visit sponsors website !	Prepairing Eye Glasses for delivery