Visually impaired, the sight of the most fragile: 8,000 people visited and 18,000 glasses donated by 400 ophthalmologists, orthoptists and opticians involved throughout Italy

ROMA – In its first year of activity, the OneSight EssilorLuxottica Italia Foundation (OSELF) reached 11 Italian cities thanks to its public visual health initiatives with over 400 vision professionals involved, over 400 EssilorLuxottica volunteers in support, more than 8,000 vulnerable people visited and nearly 18,000 glasses donated.

The budget. The OneSight EssilorLuxottica Italia Foundation today presented the 2023 Social Report, an opportunity to take stock of the numerous assistance initiatives for the most vulnerable carried out so far – in collaboration with a dense network of partners and associations active in the area in different parts of Italy – and launch new challenges in the philanthropic and visual health fields for the future. The presentation took place at the Ergife Palace Hotel in Rome with speeches by Andrea Rendina, General Secretary of the Foundation, by Teresio Avitabile, Full Professor of Diseases of the Visual System and Director of the Ophthalmology Clinic of the University of Catania and President of the Italian Society of Ophthalmological Sciences SISO and Lucio Buratto, President of the Foundation’s Scientific Committee.

The results. The Foundation’s work came to fruition in 2023 with eye examinations and the donation of glasses to vulnerable people, through the numerous socio-health and philanthropic initiatives that it has carried out and which are continuing in 2024, achieving particularly ambitious objectives together with more than 40 associations and 420 vision professionals.

The “Sight Days” are fundamental, an itinerant path of clinics that has created a solid network of collaborations, involving different entities in a transversal way: local charities, ophthalmologists, orthoptists, opticians, local administrations and volunteers from the EssilorLuxottica Group.

The Days of Sight. From January to December 2023, they stopped in 11 Italian cities, from north to south: Rome, Naples, Bari, Pescara, Genoa, Turin, Parma, Catania, Milan, Belluno, Verona. In 2024 the initiative continues its itinerary in Catanzaro, Florence, Trieste, Turin, Pescara, Cagliari, Palermo and again Milan, Belluno and Rome.

The special project “See you in Corviale”. Created with IAPB Italia Onlus – International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness, in collaboration with Sapienza Universita? of Rome – Policlinico Umberto I, Tor Vergata University – Policlinico Tor Vergata and IRCCS Fondazione GB Bietti, has started a large and innovative project in one of the peripheral districts of Rome which has the ambitious objective of making particularly urban areas free from visual problems uncomfortable. Overall, 1,451 people were visited. 1,076 eyeglasses were donated to 1,009 people. 333 ocular pathologies were identified thanks to the activity of 20 ophthalmologists and orthoptists involved.