Join us on Wednesday 11 September to help give the Miracle of Sight in Papua New Guinea.
Your generous gift of $35 in support of Giving Day will have an enormous impact, giving adults and children the miracle of sight and a chance to break the cycle of poverty and disability.
And your gift will be multiplied x5 by our Government’s International Development Cooperation Programme to enable $175 of impact!
Join us on Giving Day to hear more stories of adults and children, like Monica, who urgently need the miracle of sight-saving cataract surgery, so they can live their life to the full.
What is a Miracle of Sight?
A Miracle of Sight is a $35 gift that gives someone blinded by cataracts the simple 12-minute sight-saving surgery needed to restore their sight. Turning blindness into sight in 12-minutes… A Miracle!
Help give the miracle of sight to our near neighbours in Papua New Guinea (PNG) today.
All it takes is a 12-minute operation to restore the sight for someone living with cataracts. This is the miracle you can be part of today.
Today our Government’s International Development Cooperation Programme will multiply any gift you give to PNG times five!
Become an Eye Champion and help restore sight for just $35 per month or give a one-off gift of $420 – and with our Government’s International Development Cooperation Programme match – help more adults and children receive the miracle of sight-saving cataract surgery.
Your generosity, along with our Government’s International Development Cooperation Programme multiplier x5, will help transform the lives of people living with a disability in PNG by:
- Funding sight-saving cataract surgeries, and other eye health services, including providing glasses.
- Training new ophthalmologists.
- Helping to develop inclusive education for those living with blindness, or who have low vision, by providing braille and tactile skills to infants, pre-schoolers, school age children and adults.
The cbm-funded team in PNG are ready to go, and all they now need are generous Kiwis like you to jump aboard!
Did you know?
- Cataracts are the leading cause of blindness worldwide. They form when the lens of the eye gets cloudy which sadly leads to visual impairment and blindness.
- Although simple to treat, cataracts often lead to permanent vision loss for people living in poverty as they are unable to access affordable eye-care and surgery.
- Papua New Guinea is a near neighbour to NZ and one of the poorest countries in the Pacific.
- It’s a country that resonates with many NZ Christians through mission trips.
- It has one of the highest rates of blindness in the world, and has very low coverage of eye specialists – only 8-9 Ophthalmologists, for 9 million people whereas the WHO recommendation for a country of that size is 70–80.
- cbm has been delivering sight-saving surgeries and eye care in the remote Highlands of Papua New Guinea for 40 years.
- It is one of the ‘Hard Places’ on earth to live and to reach with development assistance.
- September is all about Miracles! Of giving a precious Miracle gift to restore sight for children and adults.
Help give the Miracle of Sight to children like Monica…
Monica was born with congenital bilateral cataracts. Like many children with disabilities in the world’s poorest places, Monica’s family could never afford the sight-saving cataract surgery she urgently needed.
Without surgery, Monica would struggle to read her books or the chalkboard at school.
Without extra support, she would miss out on vital education and be denied the opportunity to build a better future for herself.
Your gift today will help transform the lives of children like her.
Together, we can help ensure adults and children with disabilities are not left behind.
When children, like Monica, start to attend school their difficulty seeing isn’t usually recognised or understood. Instead, they are often left at the back of the classroom, unable to see, and keep up with, what is going on.
For many children who aren’t given access to basic eye-healthcare, due to a lack of specialist support or training for teachers, their difficulty seeing is often mistaken for a lack of focus in learning.
No matter how much children with disabilities want to learn – no matter how hard they try – they are being left behind.
And, missing out on school can have a devastating and lasting impact on their entire future.
We know that receiving an education is vital. And giving children in remote communities that opportunity, helps break the cycle of poverty.
But many children living in poverty with disabilities are being denied the opportunity to go to school, and the chance to build better lives.
Moreover, girls with disabilities can often be vulnerable to abuse. Therefore, it is crucial that girls are able to attend safe and inclusive schools, where they can be educated, empowered, and included.
Thanks to caring people like you, Monica was able to have her blinding cataracts removed at a cbm-funded Eye Clinic and continues to have her vision regularly monitored. Her mother Joan is so happy and grateful that her daughter no longer has to live with avoidable blindness.
Because of kind-hearted people like you, children like Monica will have brighter futures and the opportunity to attend disability-inclusive schools where teachers are taught to understand how difficulty seeing affects education.
Your gift will lead to enormous change to lives like Monica’s.
Giving Day – Wednesday 11 September
Whether you’ve joined us in saving-sight before, or it’s your first time, we can’t wait to show you what a day of Miracles looks like!