HELPING CHILDREN TO SEE CLEARLY
Corporation raises eye health awareness and sponsors glasses for primary school children.
ONE in 10 Malaysian children live with undiagnosed vision problems that can affect their ability to learn, according to a Segamat Paediatric Eye Disease Study in 2017.
This means that there will be at least one child in every classroom across Malaysia who struggles to see what the teacher writes on the board and has to resort to copying notes from friends.
Unfortunately, not every family can afford to get spectacles for their children who need it, especially outside the urban areas in Malaysia.
It was this realisation that led Magnum Corporation to act via its “I Can See Clearly Now (ICSCN)” corporate social responsibility programme, which aimed to raise awareness of eye health and sponsor glasses for primary school students.
The programme, which began with just one team of employee volunteers in 2012, has since expanded to 14 teams nationwide.
A small group of employees from Magnum Information Technology (Magnum IT) recently took a trip to Kuala Selangor to deliver prescription glasses to primary school students from two schools there.
The 21 members named their team “Magnum 3-in-1” to reflect their love in caring for the community and partnered with the selected optical partner, Pott Glasses, as well as other like-minded sponsors for this outreach programme.
Primary schools SJK (C) Pui Chi and SJK (C) Pui Teh only have around 70 and 42 students respectively, but it was clear that students with vision problems there lacked access to prescription glasses.
These are just two of five primary schools which the team have already carried out eye screening tests for a total of 1,515 students and prescribed glasses for 250 of them in the recent months.
Teachers in these schools said that the parents of the students here either could not afford to buy glasses or lacked awareness of its importance.
SJK (C) Pui Chi principal Tan Foo Gek said that the teachers noticed how some students had difficulties seeing notes on the whiteboard and instead, copied from their friends.
“My teachers would advise them to tell their parents and see an optician to get them a pair of glasses, but sometimes, the parents would just ignore them,” said Tan.
However, she noticed marked improvements in the first batch of students who received their glasses from the Magnum team about a month ago.
“The students can concentrate better now that they can see,” she said, adding that the students were happy with the glasses.
“This programme really benefited the students and will help them with their studies,” Tan added.
SJK (C) Pui Teh experienced a similar problem, where the poor academic performance among the some of the students there was exacerbated by vision problems.
“When I found that some students were squinting their eyes to see in class, I knew that something was wrong,” said school principal Gan Beow Tuan.
“The teachers observed that some of their students could not concentrate in class or copied the wrong words in their books,” she added.
Gan explained that parents in the area worked simple jobs to get by, so their children’s homework or need for glasses were not a priority for them. As a result, many students tend to take it easy in school and their examination results would suffer, despite teachers putting in the extra hours to give students extra tutoring.
Although the school still had its academic performance to worried about, Gan expressed her utmost gratitude to Magnum for helping to solve their sight problems, which meant the students could now focus better in classes.
Magnum IT Business Solutions Software Support head Barry Lee, who served as the mentor for Magnum 3-in-1, said the children really appreciated the glasses they received.
“I hope these will be useful and help them see and concentrate better in class,” said Lee.
“Our team members have put in a lot of effort into this and the entire process has helped them to nurture a spirit of camaraderie,” he added.
“Apart from being able to help schools and children who need it, our employees also feel motivated by having made a positive impact.”
To date, the ICSCN initiative has successfully raised RM836,947, screened 55,622 children, and donated 10,884 pairs of spectacles to primary school children from 210 schools and 19 welfare homes nationwide.