Our guest speaker was Brett R. Bennett from SKYGEN International Foundation, Inc. Brett currently manages multiple roles, within the SKYGEN USA organization: he is an operational lead and within SKYGEN international Foundation, he is the Vision Director. The co-founder of Skygen International Foundation visited Tanzania in 2016 and visited several primary and secondary schools. He noticed many children had difficulty seeing and could not afford eyeglasses. The country of Tanzania only has 4 eye doctors for every 2 million people. SKYGEN International Foundation has a mission of expanding access to healthcare through technology. They have developed mobile clinics that take place in school rooms or outside. All the equipment is light weight and movable. They evaluate all the children and adults to see who needs to see an optometrist. They use a Kaleidoscope Auto Refraction machine which is battery powered to get an objective measurement of prescription needs. Those who need a consultation with an optometrist are checked for any optical needs and sized for glasses. They use an assembly system called Ready2Clip, which allows them to fit and give glasses to 95% of the patients on the same day as their evaluation. They also register the patients and create an inventory in case they need replacement glasses in the future. SKYGEN International employs and trained a local team of 13 people. In total, SKYGEN International has given vision tests to 154,112 since July 2018 and distributed 29,043 glasses. They have also added dental hygiene education to the school clinics. To learn more or to donate go to skygenfoundation.org
