World Sight Day: Seva Announces 5,000 People Will Have Their Vision Restored

BERKELEY, Calif., Oct. 10, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Thursday, October 11^th is World Sight Day.

In honor of this event, the nonprofit health organization Seva Foundation is shining the spotlight on the fact that every five seconds someone around the world goes blind and 80% of blindness is preventable or curable.

There are 285 million people worldwide who suffer serious vision impairment.  Of those cases, 90% occur in the developing world. 

Seva has restored eyesight to over 3 million people worldwide, focusing efforts on building sustainable eye care programs and working to highlight the injustice that simple sight-restoring procedures such as cataract surgery are unavailable to so many.

To mark this World Sight Day, Seva has pledged to restore sight to an additional 5,000 people through their prevention of blindness activities!

Thanks to support from thousands of donors, along with a group called Focusing Philanthropy, Seva is about to reach their World Sight Day goal.

Focusing Philanthropy, a non-profit which supports meaningful causes, is helping to "focus" attention on Seva and the campaign to eradicate preventable blindness.  They are an instrumental World Sight Day partner who, through a matching challenge grant, has helped to raise over three-quarters of the funds needed to restore the eyesight of 5,000 people around the globe.

Seva is proud to announce that its partners The Nobelity Project and TOMS are also joining in raising awareness for those in need this World Sight Day.

In honor of World Sight Day, the short film Let There Be Sight, has just been released by filmmaker Turk Pipkin of the Austin based organization The Nobelity Project. The film highlights Seva's important work that is being celebrated this World Sight Day.

TOMS is joining World Sight Day for the second year.  TOMS, the One for One™ company, has been helping restore sight through Seva and global partners since 2010. TOMS is hosting World Sight Day events in Austin, Los Angeles and New York and has placed vision distortion scrims at select landmarks worldwide so viewers can experience visual impairments such as cataract and glaucoma.  See their World Sight Day site at www.TOMS.com/World-Sight-Day.

To learn how you can support Seva's World Sight Day campaign, please visit:
http://www.seva.org/world_sight_day_2012

SOURCE Seva Foundation