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CSR - Banking
Standard Chartered has launched a sustainable initiative called ‘Seeing is Believing’ (SiB) to deal with avoidable blindness. The CSR programme has a vision to help more than 31 million people across the world by 2012.
Choosing the cause:
• Visual Impairment is widespread in developing countries (SCB’s footprint), with devastating socio-economic consequences
• Every minute a child somewhere goes blind; 60% of these children die within a year; blindness deprives people of education and a job; impacts people around them as they become more dependent on others; children are removed from schools to permanently care for their elders; sisters are forced to look after their brothers; scarce social resources are employed to deal with chronic disabilities; communities are deprived of the productivity of the cared-for and the carer
• Most cases of blindness are avoidable with basic eye care facilities
•There is a need that the Bank has decided to help fill
The unique factor
• SiB is an initiative in partnership with leading eye care institutions, extending primary eye care services helping prevent blindness in many cases
• Phase III adopts the Vision Centre model developed by LV Prasad Eye Institute, which makes basic eye care facilities affordable and accessible
•Each centre is manned by a vision technician, an individual selected from the community and trained in basic eye care
•The programme also engages our staff, suppliers and customers (by raising funds & awareness) to draw attention to the global problem of blindness
•SiB supports global programmes for avoidable blindness run by World Health Organisation
•The unique factor is that a variety of expert institutions have come together to take the Vision Centre model to poor rural areas, thus making affordable eye care accessible
For the future
•Phase 1 (2003) supported 56,000 sight restorations, this included 8,000 in India
• Phase 2 (2004-7) supported 1 million sight restorations; supported 12 projects across 10 countries including 2 in India (at Vizag, AP, and Muzzaffarpur, Bihar)
• Phase 3 expects to touch 10 million people by 2010. This includes close to a half million people reached over 3 years through the India Consortium Project
• Phase IV with an urban focus, is already under implementation, will reach a total of 20 million globally by 2012
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