The World Sight Day Challenge has always been a community effort — but “community” in this context means something bigger than any single participant. It starts with the optometrists and optometry students who show up every fall, rallying their patients and their practices around a cause that sits at the heart of their profession. It extends outward from there to include the companies that make the lenses, build the equipment, develop the software, design the frames, and run the credit unions that keep those practices operating. For twenty years, all of them — the clinicians and the industry alike — have shown up for the Challenge together.
The range is striking. Contact lens manufacturers (CooperVision, Johnson & Johnson), the companies that make the raw materials those lenses are built from (Contamac), and lens manufacturers (Zeiss Vision Care). Custom lens labs (Art Optical). Frame designers (Europa Eyewear) and distributors (WestGroupe). Diagnostic equipment makers (Good-Lite). Practice management software companies (VisionWeb). A credit union that exists exclusively to serve optometry professionals (Vision One Credit Union). In their day-to-day operations, these organizations might appear to have little in common. But they all serve the same profession, and they all believe that profession has a responsibility to extend primary eye care to people who have never had it. That shared conviction is what has brought them to the Challenge, in the form of donations, employee fundraisers, and corporate campaigns that collectively add up to something significant.
Dozens of companies across the optometry supply chain have contributed to the Challenge over the years, each in their own way, for their own reasons — and together they form a constituency that makes the scale of OGS’s grant program possible. If you work in this industry and haven’t yet gotten involved, there’s a place for you here.