The Bank will match every dollar raised. In the UAE, the Bank is encouraging 500 staff to participate in the three kilometre run at the Standard Chartered Dubai Marathon on January 27, 2012, As well as profiling Seeing is Believing in a huge public even, funds will be raised shirt sales and donations.
Elsewhere in the MENA region, the Jordanian Ministry of Health and the International Agency for Prevention of Blindness (IAPB) recently signed an agreement to tackle retinopathy project caused by diabetes in the governorate of Irbid with a project funded and supported by Standard Chartered Bank. In Bahrain the bank will introduce a free eye and heath check up for all staff at the Manama branch and ‘back to school’ support for visually impaired students at the Bahrain Friendship Society.
Standard Chartered employees will play football with visually impaired students from the Saudi Bahrain Institution for the Blind, to provide some fun and raise awareness about the capabilities of these individuals. The Bank also actively raises funds on a regular basis across the region to support this cause of eliminating preventable blindness by the year 2020.
Standard Chartered announced last month at the 2011 Clinton Global Initiative Annual Meeting that it will raise a further $63 million to build sustainable eye-care services across Asia, Africa and the Middle East, almost trebling its fundraising for the prevention of blindness from 2003 to date. By 2020, the Bank aims to have raised $100 million for Seeing is Believing.
Since 2003, Seeing is Believing has impacted 25 million people globally, helped fund 2.78 million sight-saving cataract operations and facilitated the distribution of medicine to treat Vitamin A deficiency and river blindness for 3.37 million people. This is a testament to the Bank’s successful long-term partnership with the International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness. The next round of funding will enable NGOs the time to develop projects that will benefit communities for the long-term.