PolyU’s “Vision of Love Mobile Eye Care Project” promotes eye healthcare for the needy
With a mobile optometric unit, the "Vision of Love Mobile Eye Care Project" is reaching out to the community and bringing vision screening and eye health education to the doorsteps of people in need.
[Sponsored Article] The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) launched the "Vision of Love Mobile Eye Care Project" (the Project) on 13 January 2017. With a mobile optometric unit, the Project is reaching out to the community and bringing vision screening and eye health education to the doorsteps of people in need. The Project also serves as a platform to further engage the students of PolyU's School of Optometry (SO) to working hand-in-hand with The PolyU Volunteers in serving the community through Service-Learning.
The "Vison of Love Fund" (the Fund) is established with the generous support of Miss Cally Kwong, PolyU University Fellow and member of the Governing Committee of the PolyU Foundation, with a focus on community vision care.
PolyU was the first university in Hong Kong to incorporate Service-Learning subjects into its core academic pedagogy. Since 2014, SO has offered a Service-Learning subject titled "Learning through Providing Eye Care and Vision Health to the Community" to encourage students to apply their professional knowledge to serve the community. Over the past three years, more than 900 students from different disciplines have participated in providing vision screening and eye care education to over 16,000 people in Hong Kong, the Chinese Mainland, Cambodia and Vietnam. Under the Vision of Love Mobile Eye Care Project supported by the Fund, a seven-seater has been turned into a mobile eye care utility equipped with advanced vision screening equipment, which will enable PolyU to further extend its outreach service to different districts in Hong Kong. It is estimated that 5,000 vision screenings can be conducted in the first year of service, a big increase over the 3,000 screenings done annually in the past.
Professor Timothy W. Tong, PolyU President, expressed heartfelt gratitude on behalf of PolyU and the beneficiaries of the Project, to Miss Kwong and her friends for their generous donation of HK$3.8 million to the Fund. Addressing the launch ceremony, he said, "In providing community services, our professional optometry team finds that many people, especially the underprivileged, due to ignorance, financial or time constraints, often neglect the importance of regular vision screening. Even when problems are found, they would forgo timely follow-ups, thus leading to deterioration of eyesight. With the launch of this Project, our optometry experts and students can further outreach to the community to provide early prevention and intervention of vision problems. The support of Miss Kwong and other donors for the Project through the Vision of Love Fund is indeed a very meaningful and timely gift for PolyU's 80th anniversary."
