AN I FOR AN EYE

Sathvik Vudumula, 18, from Hyderabad generated so much interest with his campaign to fund free cataract surgeries for the elderly last year that it went into a Phase 2. It all started when he began to volunteer with senior citizen NGO HelpAge India and saw old people suffering with vision impairment. “I wanted to help,” he says.

So he launched Re-vision, a crowdfunding campaign aimed at conducting free cataract surgeries for people who couldn’t afford it.

“The idea was to treat 100 women from rural Telangana, with the help of Operation Eyesight Universal [OEU], an international NGO working to eliminate avoidable blindness,” Vudumula says.

This would require Rs 2.28 lakh, a sum he ended up raising through crowdfunding. “We organised the surgeries with the help of local hospitals and documented their reactions after the surgery, which were heart-touching,” says Dr Santosh Moses, regional manager for South Asia at OEU. “Some said they could now see their grandchildren, others were grateful they could go to the washroom by themselves.” After the first 100 surgeries, though, there were still a lot of requests from the local NGOs. “So we ran a second crowdfunding campaign and raised another Rs 1.10 lakh to conduct 50 more cataract surgeries. These funds were raised within three weeks,” Vudumula says. “My parents’ friends promoted my campaigns. I also got some media attention, which enabled me reach my goal through many anonymous contributors across India. In many cases, all it took was the cost of a restaurant dinner, and they could help restore someone’s eyesight.”