Teens save children’s sight
Four friends found Share the World to do good works
Twenty children in Zambia will be able to see — some for the first time — next week due to the fundraising efforts of four dedicated young Calgary women.
Share the World’s fundraising efforts are sponsoring March 14’s eye clinic in the Gwembe Valley, an ongoing project funded by Calgary philanthropist Colin Glassco.
Alysia Strobl, a Grade 12 student at Bishop Carroll High School, caught the philanthropic bug in junior high when she helped raise money for a nursery school in Uganda.
“Come high school, just doing schoolwork all the time, I felt a void. So I thought back to what made me happiest, and it was doing some of the fundraising work for some great causes,” says the 17-year-old.
Strobl rounded up “three of the best, most inspirational, hardwork- ing friends” she knew — Sawah Danniels, 18, Kelby Dalik-lyall, 18, and Rhianon Grech, 19 — and they founded a group called Share The World.
They connected with Glassco through mutal friends, and he has since acted as a mentor to the group. The young women felt a kinship with their objectives and the work that Glassco’s foundation does, so they decided to sponsor some cataract surgeries.
Share the World launched its first benefit concert in mid-february, Music for Youth in Africa, raising more than $5,000.
“The money that we raised will fund two full pediatric days at the local clinic,” restoring sight to 20 children, Strobl says.
“Those kids literally go in there blind,” Strobl says. “By the end of the day, they take the bandages off and they have sight for the first time. It’s a really neat feeling to change the lives for the better of some fellow youth.”
Glassco remembers the first time he saw a child gain sight after being blind since birth because of congenital cataracts. The bandages came off after surgery, and the child looked around the room in wonderment.
“I still get goosebumps and that was 14 years ago,” Glassco says.
Funding cataract surgeries, though, wasn’t enough for Glassco. In creating the Colin B. Glassco Charitable Foundation for Children in 1996, he has also tackled trachoma, a bacterial disease carried by the filth of flies that infects eyelids, turning them inward so the eyelashes scratch and scar the eyeballs. It is also passed on by mothers wip- ing their children’s face with a dirty skirt. Improving general hygiene — by building more than 400 clean water wells in the Gwembe Valley, training crews to maintain them and sponsoring doctors to pass on operating techniques — has helped reduce the overall incidence of the painful and potentially blinding disease.
Glassco’s foundation also builds schools and supports an orphanage in the same valley.
The foundation supports various children’s programs in Canada, too, including Neighbourlink, Dreams Take Flight, Camp Kindle and Canuck Place.
In helping out Share the World, Glassco says he is impressed by “what can be done by young people when they have an idea.”
Being a catalyst for change drives Strobl’s interest in philanthropy.
“If I can inspire just one other individual, no matter how old or young they are, and they go on to do some kind of work on their own, then I know the job is done. It’s a ripple effect,” she says.
Strobl has advice for others who want to contribute.
“You don’t have to have a perfectly planned out idea to get involved with any great cause, whether it be the local community church or whether it be international,” she says. “It’s just that movement forward that is going to cause the domino effect that can re- ally make the difference.”
Strobl and Dalik-lyall are taking a gap year after they graduate this spring, and plan to volunteer on a variety of projects before heading to university.
And the four friends are thinking about what good work they can tackle next.
For more information, see www.sharetheworld.ca and www. glassco foundation. org.