Category: CHARITY

CHARITYDONATION

Nelson Mandela Month 2024

“It is still in your hands to combat poverty and inequity.” – Nelson Mandela

Nelson Mandela Day is a global event celebrated every July 18th to honour Nelson Mandela’s life and enduring legacy. It is a call for individuals, communities, and organizations to reflect on Mandela’s values and principles and to take meaningful actions that benefit their communities. The South African government now officially recognised Nelson Mandela Month, running throughout July every year.

Originally, Nelson Mandela Day was widely recognized for its slogan, “67 Minutes of Service.” But do you know the story behind this slogan and why it was eventually changed? In 2009, it was observed that Nelson Mandela dedicated 67 years of his life to the fight for social justice—through his activism, imprisonment, and presidency. However, it was later calculated that Mandela had actually spent 65 years championing social justice since joining the ANC in 1944. Despite this error, the 67 Minutes campaign became a global phenomenon and a central aspect of Nelson Mandela International Day.

The “67 Minutes of Service” initiative led to several significant campaigns, including Carolyn Steyn’s 67 Blankets project and the creation of Mandela Day Libraries throughout South Africa. The goal was to motivate people to participate in short-term, action-focused projects for their communities, such as painting schools, cleaning streets, and preparing meals. Nonetheless, the initiative faced criticism for encouraging brief, one-off charitable acts rather than fostering sustainable, long-term change. This highlighted the need for ongoing, collaborative efforts to truly honour Mandela’s legacy.

In 2011, the Nelson Mandela Foundation introduced a new slogan: “Make Every Day a Mandela Day.” The new initiative seeks to inspire individuals to uphold Mandela’s values throughout the entire year, aiming to turn Nelson Mandela Day from a single day of observance into a continuous global movement for social justice. Over time, we have come to recognize that even short-term activities like cleanups and school renovations can have lasting impacts by bringing communities together, raising awareness, and advancing social justice goals.

Here are eight ways you can make a difference today:

  1. Support Social Justice Organizations: Donate to underfunded NGOs in South Africa that do vital work, such as Eyes2Eyes.
  2. Promote the Campaign: Increase the visibility of Nelson Mandela Day by engaging with posts online, sharing updates, and using relevant hashtags.
  3. Donate Food to the Homeless: Address South Africa’s homelessness crisis by providing food to those in need.
  4. Give to Orphanages: Contribute old bedding, clothes, and toys to orphanages, which often lack essential resources.
  5. Start a Community Garden: Help establish or support a community garden, or donate trees to provide fresh food and clean air to local areas.
  6. Participate in Clean-Ups: Join or organize street or beach clean-up efforts to benefit the environment and foster community pride.
  7. Collect Sanitary Towels: Organize a collection of sanitary products for disadvantaged women and girls, or participate in a local collection drive.
  8. Engage with Your Community: Connect with people in your community whom you wouldn’t normally interact with, spreading positivity and goodwill.

Share your contributions and those of others on social media using the hashtags #ItIsStillInYourHands and #MandelaDay2024.

Embrace every day as an opportunity to combat poverty and inequality in a sustainable manner.

Content reference: https://www.mandeladay.com

Image source: South African Government. https://www.gov.za/NelsonMandelaMonth2024

CHARITYEYECARE

World Sight Day 2023

Happy World Sight Day 2023 from the Eyes2Eyes team!!!

World Sight Day 2023 is an international awareness event that focuses on promoting understanding of vision impairment, blindness, and the significance of maintaining good eye health. It happens annually on the second Thursday of each October. It serves as a moment to underscore the importance of routine eye check-ups, the early identification and treatment of eye-related issues, and equitable access to eye care for everyone. Additionally, World Sight Day emphasises the worldwide commitment to eradicating avoidable blindness and enhancing the well-being of individuals facing vision challenges. This year 2023, the World Sight Day Theme is “Love your eyes at work”, which is a global call to all corporate leaders to prioritise their worker’s eye health and understand the importance of the vision at the workplace.

Visual impairment can impact individuals across all age groups, with over 2.2 billion people worldwide experiencing either near or distance vision issues. Remarkably, about 1 billion of these instances are preventable or can be readily treated through the use of eyeglasses or cataract surgery. Furthermore, vision problems contribute significantly to a substantial global economic loss due to reduced workplace productivity resulting from poor vision.

For the 2023 celebration, the World Health Organization (WHO) launched “WHOeyes”, a free app for the general public to check how well they can see things close up and at a distance and learn how they can protect their eyes. The app is user-friendly and can be used to check visual acuity, which is a measure of how well the eye can distinguish shapes and details at a given distance.  The app is intended to encourage people to regularly test vision, but it does not replace the need for regular eye checks by an eye care professional.

Additionally, The International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness (IABP), the sponsor of World Sight Day, encourages human resources professionals / operational health and safety officers / business owners to download free educational resources from their website and share them with staff regularly.

While World Sight Day is only 1 day, interested parties can donate or register for fundraising to continue to provide underserved people in need with the opportunity to access needed eyecare services. Our work at Eyes2Eyes continues to focus on preventing and treating corneal blindness.

Photo by Gaël Gaborel – OrbisTerrae on Unsplash

CHARITY

EyeTunes? The harmony between Music and Medicine

Music has been an integral part of the human experience since antiquity. It shares many similarities to medicine including extensive training, excellent teamwork and pursuit of optimal performance. Music can activate widespread neural networks in the brain, including emotional, cognitive and motor regions (1-4).  There is a growing body of biomedical research demonstrating that music may be used to improve the overall health of patients in ophthalmology (5) and medicine. Some examples include:

  • Stress Relief: Cataract surgery is most often performed in elderly patients. This age demographic are likely to find surgery more stressful and taxing on their bodies compared to younger people. A study on nearly 150 patients undergoing cataract surgery found that listening to relaxing music before the procedure helped to alleviate their anxiety (6). Evidence from a larger systematic review also supported the benefits of music interventions for reducing anxiety in patients before operations (7).  
  • Pain Relief: Music therapy has been tested in patients ranging from those with intense acute pain to those with chronic pain from arthritis. Music therapy decreases the perception of pain, therefore giving people a sense of better control over their pain, reducing depressive feelings and reducing the amount of medications needed to take (8).
  • Eye Pressure Relief: Some studies have associated relaxing classical music (e.g. Mozart) with the reduction of pressure in the eye . This could be important for treating glaucoma, which is a progressive disease of the optic nerve that can be more effectively managed when the eye pressure is controlled properly (9,10)

Another fantastic benefit of music is community, fundraising, and celebration. We look forward to welcoming you on Saturday 11th February 2023 to our inaugural classical music concert at D’Aria Wine Estate. More information about the concert and ticket sales can be found here! Funds raised at this event are used to give the precious gift of sight to young patients in the Western Cape with preventable corneal blindness.

 

References

  1. Bernatzky G, Presch M, Anderson M, Panksepp J. Emotional foundations of music as a non-pharmacological pain management tool in modern medicine. Neurosci Biobehav Rev 2011;35(9):1989-99.
  2. Chanda ML, Levitin DJ. The neurochemistry of music. Trends Cogn Sci 2013;17(4):179-93.
  3. Juslin PN, Västfjäll D. Emotional responses to music: the need to consider underlying mechanisms. Behav Brain Sci 2008;31(5):559-75; discussion 575-621.
  4. Koelsch S. A neuroscientific perspective on music therapy. Ann N Y Acad Sci 2009;1169:374-84.
  5. Muralidharan S, Ichhpujani P, Bhartiya S, Singh RB. Eye-tunes: role of music in ophthalmology and vision sciences. Therapeutic Advances in Ophthalmology 2021;13:25158414211040890.
  6. Bellan L, Gooi A, Rehsia S. The Misericordia Health Centre cataract comfort study. Can J Ophthalmol 2002;37(3):155-60.
  7. Bradt J, Dileo C, Shim M. Music interventions for preoperative anxiety. Cochrane Database Syst Rev 2013;2013(6):Cd006908.
  8. Lee JH. The Effects of Music on Pain: A Meta-Analysis. J Music Ther 2016;53(4):430-477.
  9. Bertelmann T, Strempel I. Short-term effects of relaxation music on patients suffering from primary open-angle glaucoma. Clin Ophthalmol 2015;9:1981-8.
  10. Zhou RX, Li F, Gao K, Li H, Yuan Y, Sun Y, Zhang XL. [Effects of different types of music on intraocular pressure and the underlying mechanism]. Zhonghua Yan Ke Za Zhi 2020;56(1):25-31.



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