Charity
Specs Addict supports a Sri Lankan school, in a village in southern Sri Lanka near the World Heritage fort city of Galle.
The school was established in 1906 by a well known local philanthropist and today is principally sponsored by the Aeysha Foundation, an NGO from the Netherlands.
The school currently has 150 students of mixed gender, aged from 6 to 17 years old. The students come from surrounding rural villages around Galle and most of the teachers are Sri Lankan locals.
Specs Addict has long been mesmerised with Sri Lanka, its people, its religion, its beautiful and diverse landscape (and its food!)
From the end of the civil war, through the devastation of the tsunami and until presently, Specs Addict has been consistently impressed by the resourcefulness, compassion, generosity and happiness of the Sri Lankan people.
Specs Addict has initiated and sponsored a program at the school to provide students requiring eyesight corrections with prescription glasses. Specs Addict invests funds that it raises through sales of its eyewear, to sponsor an eye doctor to test all the students for eye health and to provide any students in need with prescription glasses.
Most of the students at the school (and elsewhere in Sri Lanka) have minimal access to electricity and are often reading or doing their homework by candle or torch light. This forces the students to strain their eyes and means that many of them require corrective glasses. Often, the parents of the students have undiagnosed hereditary eye illnesses, which are also present in the children. Most of the students at the school have never been to an eye doctor before, nor have they ever worn glasses.
Specs Addict donates a proportion of its total profit directly into eye care programs and glasses for the students at this school.