EYElliance

The New York Times says it’s “the biggest health crisis you’ve never heard of.” 700 years after the invention, the lack of access to eyeglasses remains one of history’s most persistent market failures. In low- and middle-income countries, optical markets are nascent, and government health and education channels are underutilised; the result: nearly one billion people living needlessly with poor vision.

About the organisation

EYElliance’s co-founders saw the roadblocks from inside the system. Dr Jordan Kassalow, a successful social entrepreneur and practising eye doctor, and Liz Smith, a global development practitioner, saw promising solutions creating islands of impact with no clear path to scale. They founded EYElliance in 2015 to:

• Demonstrate the viability of new scaling pathways by activating underutilised government and private-sector channels.

• De-risk investment, new market entry by small & medium enterprises, and government adoption of proven solutions.

• Enlist new actors to join in the solution.

Through their First Grade, First Glasses and Frontline Vision initiatives, EYElliance has proven that when governments are provided actionable road maps, they can become the implementors of interventions previously delivered by NGOs. In Uganda, Ethiopia, Liberia, and Côte d’Ivoire, EYElliance has enabled Ministries of Health and Education to institutionalise 1) school-based provision of eyeglasses in public education systems ensuring every child is ready to learn, and 2) the delivery of reading glasses into government community health worker systems—a cost-effective way to reach hundreds of millions of adults with clear vision. Government-led implementation ensures efficient use of public resources and leverages existing systems to establish routine access to eyeglasses. 

EYElliance’s Optical Enterprise Growth Hub is the growth engine for low-cost optical businesses, bringing together first-mover operational playbooks, access to blended finance, and mentoring, while advancing an enabling environment to de-risk new market entry and boost investor confidence. The Hub was co-designed alongside the first movers in the space: small and medium enterprises whose founders saw a business opportunity in selling low-cost glasses in their countries.