Dave’s thoughts for 2009

We have been rather slow in keeping our blog up to date and with so much happening last year and during the winter we must keep you all up to date.

Lets just chat about last year in general. It was a busy time for us. We travelled by road to Romania 3 times 11 000 miles in all.
The visits involved :
20 Health Screening and Vision Care Sessions at Church and Charity locations in the West and Central Romania.
800 patient consultations
1500 pairs of glasses given (Cost £2560)
30 local Romanians trained and involved in the activities
5 complete sets of screening equipment given to enable units to do their own screening.
Meeting with prospective churches and charities to further our activities in new places.
Encouraging these units to develop micro enterprise activity to self finance future development.

Quite busy Eh1

On the home front we have been busy fundraising.
· Horizon Optical of Dunstable have been so generous with lenses and frame donations
· Fairplay Optical, Watford have glazed many of the really difficult prescriptions
· C&H Optics of Newcastle have been supportive with frames and lenses
· S. Cuddy Opticians of Frazerbrugh have donated many hundreds of pounds.
· Our Optometrist volunteers have paid for all their travel and worked hard to help with fundraising.
· Churches from U.K. and abroad have donated and prayed for us regularly.
· The U.K Optical Industry has donated 1000s of frames to help our efforts
· We are involved with Humanity at Heart a UK charity working in Romania. They help us enormously and we encourage them.

It is so encouraging when you reflect how many people are involved in the process.

So what about 2009

We are so excited! because after years of working in health screening with these units, some are now with our support, doing their own screening. They are using our data base and reporting back and sending requests for ready readers monthly. We are now able to book appointments for when our volunteer optometrists visit at the end of the year and send ready readers out to Romania each month. This has been a long time coming, but the fruit we see spurs us on to continue. Along with this success we now see these units going on to encourage other poor village activity. We will visit one of these villages in April ( Aninoasa) and encourage the established unit in Petrosani, to train the new volunteers. It really will fast track the training process
We will continue to visit all the established units this year to review their activity and refresh them in the processes of health screening

We have already booked all our trips for this year

April / May: We will be working in Romania towns: Petrosani, Aninoasa, Arad, Cuvin, Siria and Galsa.

We have to open the house up where we live. It all has to be drained down for the winter as the temperature can drop to below – 20.

We had a burglary last year and lost about £2000 worth of kit ( no insurance of course, because we are not resident all the time) It’s the same the whole world over!!
We have replaced most of the kit but we still have major items of glazing equipment to buy.

The £ has dropped to an all time low so everything is now more expensive so we will have to take most of our food with us. ( Imagine having to do a Tesco shop before we leave!!) It cost us about £500 per trip for fuel and accommodation and road tolls. 2 days and an early Norfolk Line Ferry usually see us in our house in Romania

We have to take all our bedding and personal effects along with frames, lenses and other equipment. The car will be full and I mean FULL!
Our son Mark will fly out and help us for the first week and then Cyril from C&H Optics of Newcastle will join us for the next 2 weeks.

We will set up our glazing lab and most of the people will get their glasses within a couple of days

We will visit the AIDS Centre in Arad to screen there and also a Street Kids project “Vis de Copil” which is run by our dear friends Kate and Kenneth Cope.

Exciting isn’t it!

June will be different, quite hot, the temperature can be in the 40s. We are having visitors from our church in UK who are going to take part in the process. Hands on is the best way to be involved, especially if you want to enjoy the process. Passive spectators don’t learn much! Training is the name of the game for this trip, with the Optometrist visit pending for September/ October 2009 the more people we are able to train, the more work is done while we are not there. It’s a matter of building teams and structure and control processes, that will support the activity for years to come that is importance for this trip.
It’s a time to meet with doctors, administrators Mayors and the like, to establish strong links in the communities that we work, or are intending to work.

September /October 2009

This is a time when we have to get the teams in the communities where we will take Optometrists, ready to accommodate a strict regime of appointments and dispensing process, The whole Screening Process is designed to accommodate the people who really need to see an Optometrist. They have been “screened in” and the appointment system is designed to enable the Optometrists to give the best we can offer to some really poor and needy patients.
Some of these prescriptions lenses can be very expensive and we are so grateful to Specsavers, Hoya, Horizon Optical and Fairplay Optical Labs for their support in this provision.
This process changes people’s lives. People who could not see to read the bible or in the case of some of the old ladies with so much dexterity in sowing and needlecraft, can now do it again. We take so much for granted in the western world!

Beryl will do her snapshots to keep you updated as to our journeys and progress this year

Thanks for your support and interest. “If you want help! give us a call or E Mail us.

Donations can be made payable to “Light for Life Romania”

Have a good year

Dave & Beryl