Jan 31 2008
About VisionSpring
The Global Issue: Market Failure for Reading Glasses
As we age, almost all of us will lose our ability to see up close. But for the more than 400 million people living in poverty who don’t have access to reading glasses, the loss of near vision can mean the loss of their ability to earn an income for themselves and their families.
For tailors, electricians, goldsmiths, and others whose precarious working lives depend on their ability to see up close, not having reading glasses means they can’t see to work, causing disastrous economic consequences for families already living on the edge.
A pair of low-cost reading glasses, long available in every drugstore in the United States, can restore their vision, productivity, and dignity. Yet this simple, life-changing product has not yet made its way to those living on the margins of society.
Visionary Social Entrepreneurship
VisionSpring is a non-profit social enterprise that reduces poverty and generates opportunity through the sale of affordable reading glasses. Vision Entrepreneurs are low-income men and women living in rural villages who are trained to conduct vision screenings within their communities, sell affordable reading glasses, and refer those who require advanced eye care to reputable clinics.
Each Vision Entrepreneur receives his or her own “Business in a Bag,” a sales kit containing all the products and materials needed for vision screening, sales, data collection, and marketing, and receives ongoing support from staff.
With blueprints for success, Vision Entrepreneurs run profitable businesses, earning more than twice their previous daily income on each pair of glasses sold. With a pair of low-cost glasses, their customers are able to double their productivity.
Global Scale
To rapidly reach scale, VisionSpring has developed a franchise model to empower partner organizations to plug the Vision Entrepreneur model into their existing operations, thus reducing the burden of building new, costly infrastructure and speeding up the amount of time it takes to launch in a new location.
VisionSpring provides the tools, knowledge, products, and support for Franchise Partners to implement its microfranchises within their existing operations, adding both profit and social value to established programs.
Global Impact
In just 7 years, VisionSpring and its partners have sold over 100,000 pairs of reading glasses, trained over 1,100 Vision Entrepreneurs, and referred over 90,000 people for advanced eye care in Asia, Latin America, and Africa.
As participants in the 2007 Clinton Global Initiative, VisionSpring committed to more than tripling its impact over the next three years, prompting President Clinton to remark that VisionSpring’s work will “help hundreds of thousands of people and in the process create a whole new sector of the economy.”
Visit us at www.visionspring.org