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Greg Wiens is the faith-based outreach coordinator of the Global Vision 2020 (GV2020) project (based in the United States), which works internationally to screen vision and distribute prescriptive eyeglasses to the 2.5 billion people living in sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and some parts of South America who need eyeglasses but don’t have access to an optometrist. Greg is also the Lead Pastor of Westwood Community Church in Winnipeg. Greg works with Kevin White, who is the founder and executive director of GV2020.White invented the USee device, which is a pair of glasses with adjustable dials and colour-coded numbers. That device has made fitting glasses a simple process that takes only a few minutes. Wearers put on the USee, look at an eye chart and turn the dial, changing the prescription until they can see clearly. The glasses technician then takes pre-cut lenses that correspond with the colour and number on the USee and snaps them into the frame of the wearer’s choice. The glasses only cost about $3 per pair. GV2020 trains local people how to test vision and make the glasses, so they can run the program on their own. In Malawi (which used to be part of Rhodesia and is the second-poorest country in Africa), Congolese refugees (> 55,000 people jammed into a 3 square kilometers sized refugee camp) have used the money they are making from the glasses centre to make down payments on farmland. With 18 million people and only 21 optometrists, Malawi has recently set up 24 health regions and GV2020 has obtained a licence to open clinics in 20 of them. To date four “Menno Eye Clinics” have been opened. While working in those clinics for a three week period, five days a week, over 1200 eyeglasses were handed out. They were sold for $6 each and all that money went into the pockets of locals and was used to make a down payment on 120 acres of land, to which some of the refugees have moved. That money was also used to dig deep wells (40-50 metres deep) for safe drinking water. An agricultural revolution has been started in Malawi. Ginger (normally imported from South Africa) is being grown in Malawi and is traded for bags of rice and beans in the grocery store. In addition, replacing a crop of traditional corn that needed 140 days to mature with two crops - a feed corn that matures in 90-95 days PLUS a crop of soybeans (a source of proteins) that matures in 60-65 days - has provided extra food for the refugees. Greg observes “We turn glasses into soybeans!” Setting up a similar system of eyeglass clinics in safe Congolese locations is in progress, and hopes to be starting in August, 2022. Greg anticipates that up to 100 trained Congolese refugees from Malawi can then be self-employed in eyeglass clinics set up in safe areas of their home country. In, addition, Greg has eyeglasses in Tunisia, whose economy has collapsed in the past year due to the pandemic. The next project involves providing glasses for refugees from Afghanistan ( at US$1.25 per pair). He’s a very busy man! |
