AVPN Asia social finance event
The Vision Catalyst Fund’s guest blogger this week is one of our founding board members Jayanth Bhuvaraghan. He is a Senior Advisor and Coach at EssilorLuxottica and recently stepped down as Chief Mission Officer, where he was responsible for driving the purpose-driven transformation of the company.
This past week, I had the opportunity to speak at an event for family offices hosted by the Asian Venture Philanthropy Network in Singapore. We were discussing the role of philanthropy and social finance in innovative giving models. It felt quite surreal to be delivering a face-to-face event, even if it was for only a handful of people at a distance.
Eyeglasses have become an integral part of our lives. We almost take it for granted. Now imagine if we did not have them. What would our lives be like? How would our driving be, our computer work, our ability to read, learn? I once posed this question to Bill Gates. Would he have invented Microsoft if he did not have a pair of glasses? It makes you think.
We are a privileged few who have access to eyeglasses in the world. Did you know that uncorrected poor vision is the largest disability in the World? By 2050 5 Billion people, which is half of the world, will be Myopic. Add to this all the people above 40 who will need eyeglasses for near work.
It is estimated that the global loss in productivity due to uncorrected refractive error alone is $272 Billion. Simply said if you put glasses on the noses of all the people who needed them you could increase the GDP of the world by $272 Billion.
As we start to find some relief from pandemic restrictions, consider how challenging this period would have been had you not been able to see and had no means of improving your situation? Imagine a lockdown without a pair of glasses.
The time to act is now
There are over 2.7 billion people in the world with uncorrected refractive error. A cataract operation and a simple pair of glasses are some of the most cost-effective interventions you can make to change the course of someone’s life.
Against the backdrop of the COVID-19 crisis, it may on the surface seem like vision should be a low priority. That would be a mistake for two reasons:
First, vision is often misunderstood as an isolated health issue, when in fact it is cross-cutting and inextricably linked to many of the issues, including those targeted by the Sustainable Development Goals. For example, if you are a garment worker in Bangladesh, your chances of staying in the job decrease dramatically as your eyesight does.
Second, we cannot build back better without better healthcare and more employment opportunities. The global crisis has revealed fundamental weaknesses in even the strongest national health systems. To go back to ‘normal’ would be a missed opportunity. The job losses, particularly for women have been felt all over the world. There are few other times in history where so many people have become unemployed, and the urgency to get them back into work has been so marked. Optimising the employability of visually impaired people and using entrepreneurship to deliver some of the basic vision services should be part of any government's economic recovery process.
The pandemic also presents an opportunity for crisis-catalysed ingenuity. I have seen this myself in Essilor, which has pioneered new technologies to help support our services. All over the world, in the health space, we have seen the accelerated creation of an incredible range of digital applications, last-mile delivery programmes and rapid training of non-medical personnel in primary care. These solutions can be harnessed to tackle a wide range of public health issues including vision care.
There are more reasons to be optimistic. The recent publication of the WHO’s World Report on Vision, a draft UN resolution on vision and the new Lancet Commission on Global Eye Health showcases global momentum shift regarding the poor vision and there is a unique opportunity to build back vision care better after COVID-19 and accelerate progress for millions of people around the world.
To do this, I feel that 2 things need to happen fast:
First, we need to create a finance revolution in vision, which blends finance in ways that have only to date been nascent. Second, we need to scale up fast, working with the private sector, NGOs and governments. That is what the Vision Catalyst fund aims to do.
Seeing the Future
The Vision Catalyst Fund aims to raise an initial $1 billion using innovative social finance products to fund best in class, public-private solutions bringing vision care to 1 billion people with preventable vision impairment and unmet needs by 2050.
The Vision Catalyst Fund will act as a funder and/or intermediary for vision care initiatives all over the world. Using capital raised from purpose built financial instruments, the Fund will catalyse proven and promising organisations and institutions that can deliver change at scale through market-based solutions and government sponsored programmes.
Our First Stop, India
South and Southeast Asia will be key initial geographies. While Singapore has the unenviable position of having the highest rate of myopia in the world, the burden of this condition is shouldered across the region as a whole. With this in mind, we will be launching our first pilot programme in India with the Vision Entrepreneur ‘Pay for Success’ Programme.
The Vision Entrepreneur Programme will support the training, tooling and deployment of 3,500 unemployed or underemployed individuals - especially women and young people - to set up their own micro-enterprises delivering vital vision screening, referrals and dispensing of glasses in rural communities. The programme is based on Essilor’s Vision for Life Eye Mitra programme. With Vision Entrepreneurs we will be incorporating additional innovations building alliances with district and state governments; partnering Vision Entrepreneurs with major factories as a proof point for eye care and worker safety; providing access to interest-free loans to build formal credit for future borrowing, and incorporating mobile technology to create better referrals into the wider health system.
200 million Pairs of Lenses
Essilor has agreed to donate to the Vision Catalyst Fund 200 million pairs of lenses by 2030. The aim of these lenses is to help catalyse much needed efforts to accelerate access to glasses. The geographic focus of the programmes will be globally focused on those who have poor access to vision services.
The VCF will announce its first Lens Donation partnerships in May this year.
Get Involved
We cannot do this alone. Collaboration is the cornerstone of the Vision Catalyst Fund. As with the event in Singapore, I conclude my remarks to you with an invitation to join a global coalition of partners coming together to kick start work that supports vision and delivers on the wider Sustainable Development Goals.
Adding strength to the vision care leadership of the Vision Catalyst Fund’s founding partners, the growing coalition will include leading philanthropists, donor governments, companies, institutional funders as well as leading technical experts in public health, data and technology and social finance.
Apart Together
While we could not be together in Singapore, I hope my blog has helped share a few insights on how vision can be an incredible catalyst for development and new financing tools combined with a hunger for embracing new technology to highlight the art of the possible. I hope that you feel heartened and energised about what the Vision Catalyst Fund is working towards in 2021, its first steps towards eliminating preventable blindness within a generation.