PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

Courts Op­ti­cal has en­tered in­to a char­i­ta­ble col­lab­o­ra­tion with Unit­ed Way Trinidad and To­ba­go.

In an event at the Courts Mega­s­tore in El So­cor­ro, on Thurs­day Courts Op­ti­cal and Unit­ed Way said the Unit­ed for Vi­sion ini­tia­tive was aimed at im­prov­ing child­hood lit­er­a­cy and health.

Shi­va Mun­gal, the Man­ag­ing Di­rec­tor of Uni­com­er (Trinidad) Ltd, said the core vi­sion be­hind the part­ner­ship is to en­sure every child has the op­por­tu­ni­ty to learn, grow, and suc­ceed with­out "pre­ventable bar­ri­ers" stand­ing in their way.

Point­ing to the fact Courts was cel­e­brat­ing 35 years in T&T, Mun­gal said that the Uni­com­er Group (the par­ent com­pa­ny of Courts) be­lieved its busi­ness suc­cess should not be mea­sured sole­ly by fi­nan­cial growth, but by the pos­i­tive im­pact made on the com­mu­ni­ties they serve, as he en­dorsed the ini­tia­tive.

Gail Sook­nar­ine, CEO of Unit­ed Way said the group was aim­ing to help 1,000 stu­dents via the ini­tia­tive.

"We work in schools where many of the par­ents are un­able to af­ford these month­ly ex­pens­es," she said, adding "That might be those house­hold ex­pens­es, so things like vi­sion wear or oth­er med­ical pre­ven­ta­tive care is­sues, par­ents are re­al­ly un­able to af­ford those things in these com­mu­ni­ties, and so they left and they go unchecked. So an ini­tia­tive like this is es­sen­tial for as­sist­ing stu­dents who might need it."

She said her team had been work­ing close­ly with school prin­ci­pals in these com­mu­ni­ties. She stat­ed the pro­gramme would pro­vide free com­pre­hen­sive eye ex­ams and do­nat­ed eye­wear to en­sure chil­dren can suc­cess­ful­ly read to learn by age eight. Be­yond med­ical in­ter­ven­tion, the part­ners em­pha­size cor­po­rate so­cial re­spon­si­bil­i­ty by ad­vis­ing par­ents on the re­spon­si­ble use of tech­nol­o­gy to pre­vent fu­ture eye strain.

Kel­lon Craig, head of Op­ti­cal fur­ther stressed the need for the ini­tia­tive as he not­ed the in­crease in my­opia in young chil­dren around the world due to in­creased ex­po­sure to screens via cell phones and tablets. He con­firmed that the trend had been spot­ted by Courts Op­ti­cal lo­cal­ly.

"Yes, def­i­nite­ly. We've seen that in­crease lo­cal­ly, that my team would have high­light­ed. So, for us, it's just en­sur­ing that we make this eye ex­am­i­na­tion ac­ces­si­ble. So, as a pri­vate en­ti­ty, while yes, we may have the dif­fer­ent ex­am­i­na­tions avail­able, this ini­tia­tive is re­al­ly go­ing out and mak­ing sure that we get to the per­sons that may be in need. So, for us, it's pro­vid­ing the eye­wear when it's need­ed, but it's al­so en­sur­ing that we give that com­pre­hen­sive eye ex­am to pick up on is­sues that may be un­der­ly­ing or go­ing un­de­tect­ed," he said, while al­so ac­knowl­edg­ing that Courts could ex­plore re­mind­ing par­ents about the re­spon­si­ble us­age of these items when pur­chased from Courts in the fu­ture.