Joe DeZenzo and his 20-person staff at the Give the Gift of Sight Foundation, a philanthropic arm of eyewear manufacturer and distributor Luxottica Group, are busy folks. DeZenzo spent the better part of May in two Romanian cities on a mission with a single aim: to help students see better. With the help of local Lions Club and American Red Cross volunteers, Give the Gift of Sight’s doctors, support personnel and vendor partners gave free eye exams and free eyewear to 26,000 people. The feeling among staff of helping people visually and also changing their lives for the better was contagious. “Our team and the local volunteers were crying when it came time to leave each of the towns,” DeZenzo says.
Meanwhile, back in the United States where Give the Gift of Sight is based – at Luxottica’s U.S. headquarters in Mason, Ohio – Senior Mission Manager Leona Dockery spent two weeks in May on a similar, domestic mission that assessed and treated more than 1,300 Hartford, Connecticut students. As a result of her staff’s work there, she says even before they had completed their stay, area teachers were reporting that the students who were seen are performing better in class. This month Dockery will be the one heading an international mission when she and staff travel to Ecuador.
Give the Gift of Sight’s global reach developed from an already global organization. Dating back to founder Leonard Del Vecchio’s 10-person eyewear manufacturing shop in Italy circa 1961, Luxottica evolved through mergers and vertical integration. Along the way, the company expanded to the U.S. and acquired leading eyewear retail stores like LensCrafters and Sunglass Hut, as well as eyewear makers like Ray Ban. Two years ago Luxottica acquired Cole National Corporation, which placed additional retail stores Pearle Vision and Sears Optical, among others, under its umbrella.
In 1988, “LensCrafters started looking at the gifts we had – skills, talent, funding – and saw how we could help people see who couldn’t afford to help themselves,” DeZenzo says. This credo became the basis for the formation of the Give the Gift of Sight Foundation that year. DeZenzo is quick to cite the vision of program founder Susan Knobler, who aptly described the foundation’s on-location efforts as “a LensCrafters without a cash register.”
No cash register is needed because the manufacturers and eyewear makers that are affiliated with Luxottica donate a majority of the frames for the foundation’s domestic missions. For the international missions, 10 percent of the eyewear dispensed is new sun or reading glasses and 90 percent of it is recycled. In addition, Luxottica pays the salaries for all Give the Gift of Sight associates, and then pays the salaries or stipends for all of the people who attend domestic and international missions as a core team member. As a 501(c)(3) foundation, Give the Gift of Sight fundraises to pick up the rest of the tab, which includes travel, equipment, lodging and meal expenses.
Even more money is saved because the recycling process for the bulk of the eyewear used for international missions takes place completely in house. According to DeZenzo, each Luxottica retail store collects eyewear, cleans it and checks it for life expectancy – an important assessment when it comes to eyewear that ends up in developing countries, where replacements could be difficult or impossible to come by. Opticians then write a prescription and bundle it with the eyewear.
The eyewear is then shipped to Luxottica’s recycling center in Cincinnati. There, associates double-check the eyewear for quality and, using special database software, type in and barcode the prescriptions and put them in boxes. When the eyewear arrives overseas, a logarithm most nearly matches a person’s eyesight to the particular eyewear they need. DeZenzo says that 40,000 pairs of eyeglasses are taken on each mission and that, to date, more than 3 million pairs of used eyewear have been recycled for distribution.
Mission Manager Janet Duke, who is currently leading what’s known as a “vision van” effort in Vancouver, Canada, says Give the Gift of Sight’s North American efforts include in-store and community outreach programs, both of which are designed to provide free or reduced-price eye exams and new eyeglasses to underprivileged individuals. Two of the biggest community outreach programs include vision van clinics and domestic missions. While vision vans range from two to five days in length and serve an average of 100 students per day, domestic missions are larger in scope, lasting for two weeks and serving 2,500 students per week.
Like the foundation’s domestic missions, its international missions take place in two-week intervals. Supporting Give the Gift of Sight’s website claim that “clear vision is a basic right, not a luxury,” DeZenzo and his staff have worked to steadily increase the number of international missions: there are 16 scheduled this year, with 20 set for 2007 and 24 for 2008. This is especially good news for people in developing countries, where access to proper eye care is limited or nonexistent.
DeZenzo points to a particularly fulfilling moment he experienced several years ago while on a mission in Venezuela as evidence of the good work for the larger world community that Luxottica performs through the foundation. “It was a very hot day and there were almost 1,500 people in our clinic,” he says. “Despite all those people in those conditions, there was one moment when the place went silent. A 25-year-old woman had her five-month-old baby with her. She had such bad vision that when the doctor fitted her with the recycled eyewear, it was the first time she saw her baby’s face.”
Priceless moments like these are the main motivation that prompts doctors and associates from Luxottica’s 6,000 retail stores and their partners to join in on the foundation’s domestic and international eye care efforts. That, and the chance to mingle with employees they ordinarily would never have the chance to meet. “We bring folks together,” says Duke. “They may not have known each other before the mission, but by the end of it they become lifelong friends. And their positions don’t matter – we’re all working together as a team.”
Dockery, the senior mission manager who will soon head to Ecuador on an international mission, enjoys the greater good Give the Gift of Sight serves, including assisting those who can’t assist themselves. “The families we help are relieved from the financial burden of providing eye care,” she says. “Through this work, I’m also making a difference in the community I live in.”
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