Special-edition, Congolese-inspired TOMS Shoes
We're teaming up with Giving Partner Eastern Congo Initiative (ECI), an advocacy and grant-making organization founded by Ben Affleck, on two Congolese-inspired designs with an additional give. Read More >>
TOMS x charity: water - An Eyewer collaboration
TOMS and charity: water, an organization founded in 2006 (like TOMS!) that’s dedicated to to helping bring clean and safe drinking water to people in developing nations, join forces for the first-ever TOMS Eyewear collab! Read More >>
Giving TOMS Shoes in the DRC
Founded by Ben Affleck in 2010, ECI is an advocacy and grant-making organization that works with and for the people of DRC, the third most populous country in Africa, and one that struggled under a cycle of violence for nearly 20 years – particularly in the east. Read More >>
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Eye Camps: TOMS is helping bring sight to remote areas
When we first launched TOMS Eyewear, we wanted TOMS customers’ purchases to have a powerful impact in helping save and restore sight. With our Sight Giving Partner, Seva Foundation, we developed a giving model that would allow our customers’ purchases not only to help those in the greatest need, but also to do so responsibly through supporting locally based, sustainable and professional eye-care programs.
We were honored to learn that our customers’ giving would reach people that couldn’t afford care AND those that couldn’t even access it.
Eye camps are an exciting and especially important aspect of the work TOMS Sight Giving supports. For patients living in rural communities, getting to eye care services (usually located in the larger cities) can be a long, costly and often dangerous journey that many cannot afford to make. Without access to eye care, they remain blind or visually impaired for life, requiring assistance from their families, staying home from work or school and pushing them further into isolation, poverty and a life lived in darkness.
In Nepal, teams of Seva-supported eye care professionals travel from their base at Lumbini Eye Institute to reach remote communities throughout the country. They visit the same communities over time, setting up temporary clinics to screen patients, perform surgeries and provide follow-up, medical treatment and eye care education. They even work with the local leaders to develop plans for building permanent eye care clinics.
Recently, a TOMS-supported team traveled with Seva for two days through the mountainous region of the Himalayas to reach Taplejung, a remote district of Nepal. Before the team arrived, local students, teachers, health workers and community leaders alerted community members about the eye camp through local radio, pamphlets and good old word-of-mouth. When the Lumbini eye care team arrived, people were lined up anxious to be seen.
Over the next three days, the team examined hundreds of patients and performed sight-saving cataract, pterygium and lid surgeries. Each patient’s surgery, post-operative care, medicine and health education was supported by a TOMS Eyewear purchase.
Seva Foundation shared with us that most patients arriving at the eye camp were walking with the support of a guardian or walking aid. However, as patients headed home after surgery, they walked independently with smiling faces.
Here at TOMS, we’re so humbled to see your support enabling eye care professionals to reach remote corners of the world with eyeglasses, surgery and medical treatment. It’s truly amazing - so, thank you!!
To learn more about TOMS Eyewear’s One for One Sight Giving Model, click here…
