The new school year at the Chiang Mai Tessaban (local municipal) schools has begun, at last! So, we are planning to train our volunteers in early August and begin our school vision screenings in August. We hope to have one screening per week for twelve weeks, so that all eleven municipal schools and the Wat Suan Dok School can be screened before the end of December.
Good news about future funding for the CMIRC SVSP, Fred Peck our good friend at the Rotary Club Spokane 21 has informed me that Rotary District 5080 has approved our Grant Application for our SVSP! They will be providing US$5,000 for our project this year!! This generous grant will allow us to expand the program to examine and treat younger children (K-2nd-grade) with strabismus (crossed-eyes) and amblyopia (lazy eye) where early intervention is critical.
More good news, this summer while I am in the USA, I will be meeting my former student Steve Horowitz who has organized the glasses frames donation from Eyewear Designs. He has informed me that he can organize the donation of hundreds of additional high-quality children’s frames again this year.
We still need volunteers for our screenings this year. If you are interested, please contact me at schoolvision@cmirotary.org. A cautionary note, while we will only use fully vaccinated and boosted volunteers for our school screenings; however it is increasingly apparent that it is possible for fully vaccinated and boosted people to contract Covid-19. Screening in the schools will involve contact with children, some of whom have not been vaccinated, so in addition to vaccine requirements we may have to add ATK testing to our procedures. We may also need to restrict our volunteers to those who do not have health issues making them more vulnerable to Covid-19. Let’s hope that by August the incidence of the disease is so low that special procedures will not be necessary.
Once again, we’d like to take this opportunity to recognize the generous support of our partners, sponsors and donors, so below is a list of these generous organizations.
THANK YOU ALL! If you wish to learn how you can help, please contact Project Champion John Schorr at schoolvision@cmirotary.org or tel.: +66 (0)8 5030 2143, US Skype # 386 490-8100 or co-chair Phijitra Schorr, phijitraschorr@gmail.com ไทย if you’d like to volunteer and be trained to help with screening.
CMIRC Member Volunteer Hours for the Month of May, 2022: 10 hours (Co-Chairs - 10, Committee Members - 0, Volunteers - 0).
Our 2022 - 2023 School Vision Screening Donor Team: