Volunteer Optometric Services to Humanity in Guatemala

Free and Low Cost Opportunities to Volunteer Abroad

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Organization	Volunteer Optometric Services to Humanity
website	http://www.vosh.org/
Country	Guatemala
Program Costs
Duration
Room & Board
Language Requirements

The primary mission of VOSH / International is to facilitate the provision and sustainability of vision care worldwide to people who can neither afford nor obtain such care. In Dec 2001 we partnered with the World Health Organization and pledged to eliminate preventable blindness by the year 2020.

We are optometrists, opticians, ophthalmologists, medical personnel and trained lay persons who have no political or religious agenda. Yet, we work with tolerant religious organizations, government agencies and service organizations. VOSH/International is the voice of 33 regional chapters and 22 student chapters in the United States, Canada, Honduras, India, Africa, South America and the Netherlands. Volunteers pay their own way. For the last 35 years we have functioned without a payroll. Our only compensation is the satisfaction of helping others. Many volunteers return year after year.

Each year we average between 80 and 90 missions serving over 100,000 people. Missions are from one to two weeks. In addition VOSH has helped establish permanent eye clinics in Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Haiti and Mexico . Our programs provide new and recycled eyeglasses, treat eye disease and refer/perform eye surgery. We also set up clinics in disaster areas... as in Bosnia following a war... as in El Salvador following an earthquake... and in Honduras and Dominican Republic following a hurricane. VOSH was one of the first relief organizations to arrive in Albania after the fall of Hoxha. In 2005, 2006 and 2007 VOSH chapters treated victims of Hurricane Katrina in Houston and New Orleans.