I Care, We Care, Do You Care?

Are you tired of traveling just for the sake of traveling?  If so, ICARE International might be your answer. For the last three years, my wife Jay and I have traveled with I CARE to Mexico and Guatemala to help restore vision to thousands of some of the poorest people in the Western Hemisphere. Since 1989, ICARE has organized trips to Mexico, South and Central America, and U.S. Indian Reservations. Each I CARE mission includes volunteer optometrists and other professionals who give free eye exams, eyeglasses, cataract surgeries, prescription sun glasses and/or hearing aids to indigenous people who can’t afford them. For the past 20 years, I CARE has helped hundreds of thousands to not only see or hear better, but has restored their livelihood and given them a new start. Most of the people served have never seen a Doctor.

Preparing for a one week clinic takes all year. Our leaders, photographer Lance Kinney and ICARE co-founder, Dr. Phil Ortiz, have already logged many months securing this year’s clinic site, getting the necessary permits, searching for proper accommodations, chartering boats, and getting translators for the local Mayan dialect. Board members and volunteers also organize a yearly August fundraiser at the Avila Beach Athletic Club & Spa.

Ideally, an eye clinic serves about 50 people per hour. For each one week clinic, approximately 10,000 pairs of prescription eye glasses need to be collected, inspected, cleaned, adjusted, labeled, computerized and packaged. This adds up to roughly 10 minutes of time for each pair. Doesn’t sound like much? 10,000 by 10 equals 100,000 minutes or 1,666 hours or 42 weeks.

However, only about half of all collected used glasses turn out to be useful in the field. To set up the clinic, every volunteer carries a 50 pound bag onto the plane in addition to their own luggage. ICARE donates unusable glasses to other groups. Recently, I CARE gave nearly 6,000 pairs to the Cambria Lions Club.

Most of the glasses come from the Chicago Lions Foundation and from SLO County. The glasses are the discards that people usually return to their eye doctors when getting new ones. In addition, hundreds of new reading and sunglasses have been generously donated by Dioptics, a manufacturer located in SLO South County. Used glasses, collected in Illinois, are cleaned and labeled with their proper prescription by inmates of the Illinois prison system This creates meaningful work, offering inmates the satisfaction of helping others in need. For everything else, volunteers are needed, and volunteering, especially in the field, can be a life-changing experience!

There is no previous knowledge or experience required. Ages of the volunteers range from 16 to 84. Anyone in reasonable physical shape can participate. It’s a fun group of interesting characters who work hard while taking great joy in helping others.

This March, we will be going with a group of 7 eyecare professionals and 27 lay persons to Tzununa, a remote village near Lake Atitlan, Guatemala. The clinic takes about a week. When the clinic is done, we’ll have time to visit beautiful Lake Atitlan, colonial Antigua, or the magical Mayan ruins of Tikal, Quirigua or Copan.

If you’d like to visit fascinating and exotic places while directly serving hundreds of beautiful and loving people in need, contact   HYPERLINK "http://www.icareinternational.org" www.icareinternational.org.

For questions, donations or to volunteer, contact Lance at (805) 440-3433 or Klaus at (805) 238-4454. We’d love to talk to you.