Seva Canada: A Solution in Sight

On Tuesday February 2, the students of Mme Grunfeld and Mme Lee at Tomekichi Homma Elementary School in Richmond, BC presented Seva Canada with a giant cheque for $2,146.70.

Two of the students at Tomekichi Homma School presenting a cheque to Susan Erdmann

This very generous amount was raised by the students and will be used to restore sight by funding cataract surgeries in remote areas of the developing world. There are 45 million blind people in the world and most of this blindness is caused by cataract, the clouding of the eye’s natural lens, and can be treated with a short operation costing $50 or less.

The cheque was presented to Seva board member, Susan Erdmann, and Seva office manager, Annie Chen, at a special ceremony at the school.

Students of Mme Grunfeld and Mme Lee with cheque for Seva Canada

Susan, who has traveled at her own expense and seen Seva’s work first hand. Susan told the children about the three eye camps in Tibet that she witnessed, at which hundreds of blind people were led in by their family members or caregivers and who, after a short operation lasting 15 minutes or less, they had their sight restored.

Seva Canada is very grateful to the students of Mme Grunfeld and Mme Lee for their hard work and compassion in helping to restore sight to the world’s blind. The money raised will be used to help fund a Seva eye camp in Tibet, an area with the highest rate of blindness in the world.

Here at Seva we call the acts of generosity and kindness that all our donors and partners in the field display, on a daily basis, compassion in action. Vancouver Talmud Torah’s Grade 7 class call those same acts a mitzvah.

A new program at Talmud Torah, called The Mitzvah of Valuing Philanthropy, has students researching charitable organizations that provide a wide range of services – locally and internationally. The students give a presentation on their chosen charity to the class and then the students together decide how to allocate grants to the different charities. This year, $18,000 was raised by students from their bar/bat mitzvah gifts, by the students’ families and community donors.

Seva Canada was very grateful to be included as one of the 20 charities in the program this year by students Shakaed Greif, Lena Arbetova and Adi Pick. The girls visited the Seva office, combed through our website and presented Seva’s cause to their class. They were obviously compelling as Seva received a cheque for $850 at yesterday’s Ceremony of Giving.

We are so grateful to Vancouver Talmud Torah and to Shakaed, Lena and Adi for their compassion, service and mitzvah. We promise to use the funds wisely and well and will dedicate them to restoring sight to children.

Children receiving eye care at a recent Seva eye camp in a remote hill district in Nepal. Photo courtesy of Johannes Burge