With partners in nine countries around the world, Seva is working to reduce avoidable blindness by helping communities develop high quality, affordable eye care services that they can sustain on their own. Seva provides financial resources, technical expertise, and networking opportunities to help communities build sustainable solutions to poverty and disease. In the past year alone, Seva-supported programs served over 500,000 people in some of the world's poorest communities, including 30,000 people who had cataract surgery to restore their eyesight. Seva's work to develop direct eye care services in developing countries around the world is concentrated on three main program activities:
- Eye Hospital Clinical Services: SEVA supports local hospitals and clinics in Nepal, India, Cambodia, Tibet, Bangladesh, Tanzania, Egypt, and Guatemala, helping them to provide basic eye care, surgeries, eye exams and glasses at little or no cost.
- Community Based Services: Seva supports outreach programs in underserved communities and trains local community health workers and volunteers to provide education on hygiene, nutrition, and poor vision. These health workers refer patients needing eye glasses or medical treatment to the nearest hospital and arrange their transportation to ensure that people are able to access the care they need.
- Mobile Eye Camps: Seva supports mobile teams of doctors and support staff who travel to remote rural areas to provide outreach and education, diagnostic screening, and sight restoring surgeries to people in need.
Seva is also deeply concerned about sustainability. It helps programs achieve sustainability through the following activities:
- Training Skilled Eye Care Personnel: Seva has helped provide clinical training for thousands of local eye care workers, covering every aspect of eye care from cataract surgery to nutrition education to dispensing of eyeglasses.
- Sustainable Program Models: Along with its principal partner in India, Aravind Eye Care System, Seva has helped establish a cross subsidization pricing system for eye care services that will ensure financial sustainability. It is now adapting this successful model for programs in other countries around the world.
- Volunteer Trainers and Mentors: Seva offers its program partners access to ongoing guidance and support through a network of expert volunteers who serve as trainers and mentors.
For over 25 years, Seva has also partnered with Native Americans in the US to build healthy communities, sustain their culture, and protect sacred lands and the environment. Seva's Grants Program supports a variety of grassroots projects in the areas of health, environmental restoration, community development, spiritual and cultural renewal, and treaty rights protection. The Diabetes Wellness Program is helping Native Americans overcome a deadly epidemic with an innovative blend of modern medicine and traditional forms of healing. The core of the program is the Diabetes Talking Circle, which is nationally recognized as a best practice model.
Seva Foundation is headquartered in Berkeley, California, with regional offices in Nepal, Tibet, Cambodia and Mexico.
