• Vision Aid Overseas (VAO) sends teams of volunteer professional optometrists and opticians to mainly African countries to test eyesight and dispense spectacles where appropriate. There is huge unmet demand.

• While not considered a disability or economic problem in the West, poor eyesight undermines individual economic capacity in the developing world.

• The charity also trains health workers and students to continue the work in-country, and creates and equips workshops with machinery, lenses and frames.

• VAO provides a solution which can cost effectively make the difference so that an otherwise impaired individual can study or work as productively as anyone else.

• The small and rapidly growing charity was supported by 149 professionally qualified volunteers in 2008 who spent their own time and money on the projects to transform the livelihoods of the people they treated.

• In 2008, VAO sent 22 ophthalmic teams to 7 countries. It supports training and workshop work in Ethiopia, Zambia, Sierra Leone and Uganda.

• VAO is gearing up to increase its impact on beneficiaries in needy places by increasing training and workshops in-country. This includes expanded UK facilities, staff and profile, and a planned country office during 2010.

• VAO’s concept is simple, focussed and provides a long-term solution to a common problem that can be disabling, all for less than £14/person.