Newsletter, Fall 2019 | Vision To Learn

Happy Halloween! We are delighted to share that today Vision To Learn helped our

250,000th Student!

Thanks to the wonderful work by our staff and our partnerships with communities across 13 states, we have hit a spectacular milestone. Join us as we recap the work we have been doing at Vision To Learn for the last few months.

2019 Summer of Vision

In June, Vision To Learn celebrated the completion of our successful effort serving every school in need in Richmond, Virginia. Through our partnerships with Conexus and Richmond Public Schools, 20,000 students were provided vision screenings, more than 3,500 were provided with eye exams, and over 2,400 were provided with glasses. Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney said it best: “Because of this transformative and productive partnership, thousands of kids throughout Richmond will be able to see clearly at school, and better understand the world around them. Enabling our students to see better will make them better learners and give them a clear path to success inside and outside the classroom. For the students, their families, and their schools, the impact will be immediate and long-lasting.”

A Record-Breaking Summer with Boys & Girls Clubs

This summer, through the generous support of Deerbrook Charitable Trust, Vision To Learn partnered with Boys & Girls Clubs across the country. Vision To Learn provided 2,674 students with eye exams and 1,991 with pairs of glasses at 135 sites! But that’s not all. Over summer break, Vision To Learn also provided an additional 2,886 students eye exams and 2,146 with glasses at locations like public libraries, Dodger RBI events (more below), health fairs, parks and rec centers. In all, this was a record summer for Vision To Learn and we are truly grateful to Deerbrook Charitable Trust for funding this work.

Big Projects Happening This Fall

We are back in LA Unified, where, with the support of the district and the LA Clippers Foundation, Vision To Learn has provided more than 46,000 students with eye exams and over 37,000 with glasses. We’ll be helping an additional 16,000 LA Unified students in the upcoming semester, successfully completing our commitment!

We are excited to announce Vision To Learn’s launch in San Diego Unified this fall! In SDUSD elementary schools, an estimated 9,000 students lack the glasses they need to see in a classroom. A new Vision To Learn mobile clinic will begin helping San Diego kids with the generous support of Price Philanthropies.

Due to overwhelming support from the community, this fall we are adding a second mobile clinic to our Charlotte, North Carolina program. Double the clinics means double the students served!

Through a new statewide MOU, Vision To Learn will be helping kids on all the Hawaiian islands in partnership with Project Vision Hawai`i, Hawaii Department of Education, and Hawaii Keiki Nurses. This collaboration will provide over 3,500 Hawaiian “keiki” with eye exams in the year to come.

Stories from the Community

We want to share with you one of our favorite stories we have received this Fall from a community partner in North Carolina:

“Today was a huge success at CFSC today! Thank you to the VTL team for the awesome service you provide to our community. Today was a very touching day for me…the children were so excited ‘to be able to see’ and to have their new glasses before starting school! As a rising freshman told me today, ‘I will be able to see, and will go from being a B student to a straight A student – I am going to college!'”

-Donna McCombs, Children & Family Services Center

We’re excited to carry on these successes to the New Year!
Sincerely yours,

Virginia Beutner
Board Co-Chair, Vision To Learn

Ann Hollister
President, Vision To Learn

P.S. Giving Tuesday is around the corner so keep an eye out for our campaign on our social media.