Our history

Vision Action – A brief history of two organisations

In 2022, Vision Action was formed through the merging of two organisations with rich histories in the eye health sector – Vision Aid Overseas and Vision for a Nation Foundation. This merger represented five decades of collective experience and together created Vision Action with the mission “to reduce vision impairment through achieving universal access to affordable eyecare and glasses”. You can read more about our 2030 strategy here.

Vision Aid Overseas (VAO) was founded in 1985, with the mission to enable people living in poverty to access affordable eye care. The organisation began when a group of optometrists and dispensing opticians, led by Brian Ellis MBE, realised how many people were prevented from learning or earning simply due to a lack of access to affordable eye tests and glasses and understood that 90% of these issues were preventable or curable.

Since then, they have provided eye care and glasses to millions of people in communities where vision solutions simply didn’t exist. They have supported quality, impactful and innovative programmes in low- and middle-income countries, to strengthen eye health systems to increase equitable access to quality eye health care and glasses. They have done this by supporting national governments to deliver their national eye health strategies, working in collaboration with civil society organisations, International and National NGOs and the private sector. 

In 2003 VAO set up the first Vision Centre in Ethiopia, the focus was on increasing and building the capacity of the eye health workforce and providing the infrastructure and equipment for them to deliver quality services to those that need it most. In the past decade alone, VAO has established 26 vision centres across 6 countries in sub-Saharan Africa, trained over 3,350 eye health personnel, and more than 1.4 million people have received eye tests through supported programmes. 

Vision for a Nation Foundation (VFAN) was established in 2011 by founder and philanthropist, James Chen. VFAN´s mission was to make eye care globally accessible in order to unlock economic growth and human potential of the world’s poorest communities.
In just over 5 years with the support of the founder, together with funding from DFID, USAID and UBS Optimus Foundation, VFAN transformed eye care in Rwanda (2012-2018). VFAN enabled the Rwandan government to make Primary Eye Care (PEC) universally accessible to the entire population. Building on the success from Rwanda, VFAN expanded operations in Ghana (Central and Upper East Regions), from 2019 to 2022. The Ghana programmes was supported with further funding from James Chen and with grants from USAID, UBS Optimus Foundation and Medicor Foundation.

Some of VFAN’s key achievements are as follows:

• Provided eye care services to over 1 million people in Rwanda.
• Helped to reduce the cost of eye care by up to 80% in Rwanda.
• Developed and implemented sustainable eye care programs in Rwanda.
• Collaborated with governments, health ministries, eye care professionals, and other NGOs to improve access to eye care.
• In Ghana, VFAN trained 359 nurses and provided over 67,000 vision assessments during the programme lifetime.

Stronger together

Coming off the back of COVID-19 and the ever-shrinking international development funding pot, the two organisations decided in late 2021 that it would be in their best interests to seek a longer-term partnership which would allow them to combine forces and scale their ambition. The subsequent merger would enable the newly named Vision Action to scale up its operations and to build their PEC capacity.

The collaboration demonstrated commitment from both VAO and VFAN who previously had benefitted from a good working relationship built over five years, starting in 2017. On the 1st March 2022, the two organisations shared a joint mandate of enabling people living in poverty to access affordable eye care and glasses and achieve greater efficiency and impact through this joint endeavour. VFAN’s team in Ghana became Vision Action staff, and Vision Action invited both VFAN’s CEO and a trustee to join their Board of Trustees. VFAN’s founder, James Chen, has also become a Patron of Vision Action. This will help to embed VFAN’s spirit of innovation and assist in the transformation that this opportunity brings. 

Vision Action will continue to provide VFAN’s programme in Ghana, in line with their mission. The combined expertise of the two organisations will help to increase impact over the coming years and bring essential eye care services to those that need it most. Our programmes in Ghana will build on the legacy of VFAN in delivering Primary Eye Care for communities and school-based screening for children.

By bringing the two organisations together, our offer is more comprehensive and plays to our combined strengths, so we can have greater impact for sustainable access to eye care not only in Ghana but also in Sierra Leone, Zambia and Ethiopia.

Moving forward: Our 2030 strategy is now well underway, focussing on 3 key objectives: 

1) To support the development of Human Resources for Eye Health (HREH) through education and training for optometry cadres and primary health workers; 

2) To strengthen essential eye health services through the integration of primary eyecare into primary healthcare, integration of eye health into school health, strengthening supply chains for affordable glasses and equipment, and exploring alternative solutions to increase reach such as testing new technology an innovation; and 

3) The engagement and mobilization of communities to increase awareness, knowledge, health-seeking behaviour and demand for services, and to ensure a continuum of care.

With programmes currently in 4 countries and ambitions to expand our reach, Vision Action acts as a catalyst, providing global expertise and technical knowledge in partnership with others, to demonstrate good quality, impactful and innovative programme models, based on sound evidence, research and international/global guidelines. Our programmes will generate further evidence to advocate for and support scale-up, working with national governments and other partners and working internationally as part of broader advocacy and campaigning coalitions.