Who We Are

Our Story

We are a group of young idealists with an ardent desire to fight world poverty. We are students from Saint Viator High School in Arlington Heights, Illinois. We are not gainfully employed but we believe that this limitation should not hold us back from reaching out to those living in poverty. EYEsee is the product of this conviction.

We understood that poor vision contributes directly to Third World poverty. Poor eyesight leads to unemployment and the inability to support a family. It keeps a person from achieving economic self-reliance. It reduces individual productivity and diminishes the quality of life. It also adversely affects the quality of education in the poorer countries.

For the world's poor, eye care and eyeglasses are beyond their means. Food, shelter, medicine, and clothing take up all their meager financial resources and eyeglasses are simply held for another time when they hope to have extra income to buy them.

What's anomalous about this problem is that more than 4 million eyeglasses are discarded in the U.S. each year. Despite collection efforts by large service organizations, 3 million eyeglasses remain uncollected. We feel that this is just too high a number to ignore in the context of the desperate need for eyeglasses in many parts of the world. These statistics simply confront us with the reality of the need for a more active and sustained effort to recycle used eyeglasses.

In the summer of 2008, we founded EYEsee as an international health mission. We saw that by collecting as many eyeglasses that are being discarded in the U.S. and then partnering with international humanitarian organizations to distribute those eyeglasses to the world's poor we can alleviate some of their poverty. We committed ourselves to helping the world's poor experience corrected vision with recycled eyeglasses and in so doing advance their economic wellbeing.

Janice Guzon

President/Founder
janice@eyeseemission.org

I wear both eyeglasses and contacts, so I have an understanding of what it's like to live with impaired vision. I began the EYEsee mission because I've always felt the call to make a difference in the world. Knowing my friends felt the very same drive, I gathered them together to build and grow EYEsee.

Maeve Tibbetts

Founding Member
Campaign Manager for Churches (East)
maeve@eyeseemission.org

I wear both glasses and contacts. I'm learning a lot from my time as a leader of EYEsee, especially how to use HTML and how to take on great responsibility. Making a difference sure takes a lot of work!

Hannah Tibbetts

Founding Member
Campaign Manager for Offices
hannah@eyeseemission.org

As a Founding Member, I have taken the opportunity not only to learn how to obtain and organize official documents, but also to grow and run a foundation. Because I wear both glasses and contacts, I know the importance of the blessing of sight to an individual.

Chris Santucci

Campaign Manager for Churches (West)
chris@eyeseemission.org