ONG Visió Sense Fronteres, located in Calpe, celebrates its 20th anniversary. On Saturday the 21st, the association celebrates the day with a tribute to all those who have cooperated with the NGO during these years.
Visió Sense Fronteres is an NGO founded in 1999 by optician Isabel Signes, her friend Josep Ginestar and her brother José Francisco Signes. Since then, she has conducted numerous campaigns to prevent and treat avoidable blindness in Third World countries. In these 20 years, the NGO has reached more than 100,000 people, conducted more than 8,000 glaucoma surgeries and donated more than 35,000 pairs of glasses.
Currently, 36 million people in the world are blind, mainly due to glaucoma and uncorrected refractive errors (myopia or farsightedness without glasses) and 216 million people suffer from visual impairment. Eighty percent of these cases are preventable and treatable if they have the appropriate resources.
In 2007, this NGO received the Ministry of the Interior's "Declaration of Public Benefit", which obliges the association to comply with transparency and control requirements such as the annual presentation of financial statements and the campaigns it conducts. The fact that this declaration is available also allows people's donations to be tax deductible in the income statement.
In addition to cataract operations and optometric audits, DIE NGO has carried out surgical training projects (awarding scholarships to nurses from third countries for surgical training), optometric and ocular audits in schools and numerous information meetings.
The 20th anniversary event of this association will take place on Saturday 21 September at 20.30 in the Saló Blau of the Casa de Cultura. The event will end with a concert by the guitar and violin duo of Vicent Ballester and Santiago Juan Martin. It is a free event.