Gender Equality India Project #51440

Empower women in rural India to combat blindness

by Jiti Foundation

Project Report | Nov 16, 2025
Teleconsulting Turbocharges Accessible Care

By Lucy Gorham | Jiti Foundation Vice President

Checking a Patient for Eye Injury

Teleconsulting Takes Vision Care Access to a New Level

One of the greatest challenges to combatting blindness in rural India is the obstacles that patients face in finding affordable and accessible care. Many families don't have access to good public transportation, let alone a car to travel longer distances. The COVID19 pandemic exacerbated these problems as patients worried about exposure to the virus in health care facilities and on public transporation. As a result, once the pandemic abated, vision centers were confronted with many more patients with eye disease or injury in an advanced stage requiring specialists and often surgery.

In response, our partner Dr. Shroff's Charity Eye Hospital launched a major and very successful effort to train Vision Center staff to use teleconsulting equipment. This equipment allows a patient to be seen and to be immediatealy referred to experts at the main hospital without having to travel to Delhi. Not only do patients receive immediate treatment, they also are spared the expense of travel and having to miss work. Begun as a pilot in 2021, teleconsulting capacity is now available in every Vision Center, bringing specialist vision care to even remote villages.

One example of teleconsultating in action is the story of a young welder living in our target area of Uttar Pradesh. Like many welders in India, this young man doesn’t wear protective glasses while working. One day at work, a metallic particle from a grinder entered his left eye leading to pain, redness, and watering. Many of his co-workers had experienced this before, and a visit to the village doctor would usually fix the symptoms, at least temporarily. He didn’t want to go too far for treatment, fearing loss of wages, but his symptoms didn't allow him to work. He had heard about eye care facilities available nearby so he visited the Vision Center in Mohammadi.

The vision technician performed an initial evaluation and, upon suspicion of a corneal foreign body, arranged a teleconsultation with a cornea specialist in Delhi. Through pictures, the cornea specialist advised immediate referral to the nearest satellite center and explained the importance of urgent removal. Once the patient was in the satellite center, the foreign body was removed under aseptic conditions. When the patient didn’t follow up as suggested because of the fear of losing another day’s wage, he was offered follow up through teleconsultation in the Vision Center and received the good news that the defect had fully healed with no signs of infection. With the help of teleconsultation, the foreign body had been promptly removed thus achieving excellent outcomes without the patient having to miss multiple work days.

An Opthalmic Program Trainee Gets Her Own Vision Prayers Answered

We love to introduce our supporters to the amazing young women who participate in the Opthalmic Paramedic Program at our partner Dr. Shroff's Charity Eye Hospital (SCEH.) This quarter's story is especially poignant because, not only is this young woman pursuing her dream of becoming a vision care professional, she also had her life changed by receiving state-of-the-art eye surgery herself after she had enrolled in the program.

Rachana, a 17 year-old resident of Mohammadi, Uttar Pradesh, always aspired to clear the Indian civil service exams and get a government job. She was hardworking, smart and aced all her subjects at school. With the guidance of her uncle, she was determined to clear the exams and secure a job. The only thing she lacked was confidence stemming from her appearance. She had an abnormal growth in both her eyes which made her uncomfortable and self-conscious when out in public.

Her family discouraged her from pursuing the civil service exam due to her eye problem and she also felt she wasn’t ready to face the world with her condiiton. She visited multiple hospitals and was told that surgery to remove the mass might compromise her vision. Nearly defeated, she visited one of the vision screening camps arranged by Dr. Shroff’s Charity Eye Hospital (SCEH). While there, she was encouraged to join the Allied Ophthalmic Personnel (OP) program and decided to pursue this as a career. During her course, she dared to hope again and discussed her condition and apprehensions with the cornea surgeon posted in SCEH Mohammadi. Talking to him convinced her that a solution was possible and she underwent surgery in both eyes. Today she is a confident and socially engaged student, working every day to pursue a future she hadn't dreamed possible.

Rachana Post Surgery

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Jul 21, 2025
A New Paramedic Discusses Her Life Transformation

By Lucy Gorham | Jiti Foundation Vice President

“My goal is to show young women and girls that our voices and ideas matter, and you are never too young to dream big!” – Marsai, Allied Opthalmic Parademic (AOP) Program graduate

One of the greatest rewards of our work at the Jiti Foundation is to witness young women from smaller villages discover new opportunities that they never imagined possible. So many young women in India have the potential and ambition to contribute to their communities, whether large or small, and yet pathways remain limited. Through the opthamalogy training programs we support through our partnership with Dr. Shroff’s Charity Eye Hospital (SCEH), these young women are building lives with new potential for themselves, their families, and their communities. We thought you would enjoy hearing about the experience of one program participant, Marsai, in her own words.

‘Even as a I child I dreamed big, or preposterous as others would say. I am here to find out which of these is true. I joined Shroff’s Charity Eye Hospital (SCEH) Mohammadi in 2021 when I was only 19 years old. I heard about the [Allied Opthalmic Paramedic] course from a friend. Coming from a small village called Machala, nearly 10 kilometers from the hospital, the odds were not on my side. I was second of four children in a farming family. While I wanted to support my family financially, my parents had other plans. But I wasn’t one to buckle. I joined the AOP course initially to learn new things and also earn pocket-money. Simultaneously I completed the Biological Sciences course through correspondence. In the last few months, I also learned to do lab work, which is the favorite part of my day.

My aim each day is to do something I have never done before. In this spirit, I rented a room nearby to make traveling easy and I pestered my brother to teach my how to ride a Scooty and now I have bought one by paying in installments. Food and travel was a major challenge earlier, as I couldn’t cook or drive, which now I have learned to do. But the biggest obstacle that I had to overcome was to learn to talk well, especially in English. And being able to communicate fluently is my most significant achievement.

All my life I have had to fight to break free. But now there is no looking back. Also, since other girls from the village have started to follow in my footsteps, my parents are now accepting my way of life and I believe are even proud of me. Working here at SCEH, I am inspired to be a doctor, an eye doctor. Currently I don’t know how to go about it, but I am sure I will figure it out. I don’t want to leave this place anytime soon. I think I am not done learning…and serving. Before I came here, I only thought about myself, but now I constantly think about helping others, and I am loving the new me.”

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Mar 21, 2025
The Village of Kondli Has a New Vision Center!

By Lucy Gorham | Jiti Foundation Vice President

One of the First Patients at Kondli Vision Center

The Jiti Foundation is thrilled to announce that, due to the generosity of donors like you, it raised the funds needed to open another new Vision Center in India in partnership with Dr. Shroff’s Charity Eye Hospital (SCEH.) The Kondli Vision Center, located in East Delhi, just launched its provision of eye care services in February following a festive dedication celebration. Not only does the Vision Center provide screenings for residents of all ages, it will also identify and refer patients who need emergency and surgical care directly to SCEH in nearby Delhi. With untreated cataracts being a major cause of blindness in India, this referral service to access affordable surgical care is an amazing beneft for under-resourced communities. The Vision Center also houses a shop where those in need of good quality eye glasses can receive them free of charge or purchase them at a very affordable price.

Kondli Village was chosen as the Vision Center site because of its proximity to multiple geographic areas of need. Not only can it serve a large area of Delhi, it is also very near the border of the neighboring state of Uttar Pradesh. Both of these areas have a high proportion of low-income residents without access to quality vision services. As part of the decision-making process for the optimal location of the clinic, SCEH conducted a survey of community residents which highlighted both the need for and broad community support for the vision clinic. The clinic site is easily accessible by multiple bus lines and is nearby to several schools serving children from elementary through secondary school.

As part of its support of vision centers in India, Jiti also supports the training of young women to be Certified Opthalmic Paramedics (COP) through SCEH. Especially in the many areas where career options for women are extremely limited, the COP Program provides a wonderful opportunity to train for a rewarding and stable livelihood. The new Vision Center will provide employment for two COP graduates who will begin work as soon as their training is completed. The COP Program recruits young women from the village in which they will serve which increases the trust of local residents and also is a point of pride for them that one of their own students has achieved this success. These young women are often the sole support for their family and provide the income needed to allow younger siblings to complete school.

Looking ahead, Jiti plans to provide funding for the establishment of a new Vision Center each year, thus continuing our expansion of quality vision care in India while we empower women to be role models through helping their communities.

A Thank You Plaque at the New Vision Center

The Entrance to the New Kondli Vision Center

COP Trainees Gather on a Festive Occasion

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