EYElliance

EYElliance is a global nonprofit coalition committed to closing the visual divide by accelerating equitable access to eyeglasses for one billion people. The organization collaborates with a diverse range of partners, including governments, private sector entities, and non-governmental organizations, to implement market-based solutions that integrate eyeglasses into public health and education systems. By engaging various stakeholders, EYElliance aims to ensure that individuals in underserved regions can obtain high-quality eyeglasses where they live and learn.

The coalition employs a multifaceted strategy to achieve its mission, focusing on government delivery, sustainable financing, catalytic partnerships, and institutional advocacy. EYElliance works to enable governments to efficiently integrate eyeglasses into public health and education systems, influences and increases new financing within the public and private sectors, grows the ecosystem of champions that join in the solution and accelerate global scale, and ensures that the issue area is prioritized on the agendas of key actors within global development. Through these efforts, EYElliance seeks to address the unmet need for eyeglasses, particularly in low- and middle-income countries, where access to vision correction is limited.

EYElliance's impact includes enabling the Liberian Ministry of Health to become the first government agency to make vision screenings and reading glasses available nationally through community health workers, catalyzing the first national-level school eye health initiative fully integrated into government systems, and generating unprecedented coverage about the unmet need for glasses, resulting in a new resource allocation by the US Government, totaling $13 million to date. The organization also inspired the Clinton Health Access Initiative to include school eye health alongside other global health priorities and successfully advocated for prioritization of glasses as part of the global Assistive Technology movement and the WHO Academy. Through these initiatives, EYElliance demonstrates its commitment to improving vision health and educational outcomes globally.

EYElliance is headquartered in New York, USA, and operates in various regions, including Liberia and Latin America. The organization collaborates with a wide range of partners, including the World Health Organization, World Bank, World Economic Forum, USAID, Global Partnership for Education, International Finance Corporation, and the US International Development Finance Corporation. EYElliance is funded by organizations such as the Skoll Foundation, UBS Optimus Foundation, and the Aspen Institute. The coalition's work has been recognized in reports by FSG and Bridgespan, highlighting its role as a systems change agent in the global eye health sector.

EYElliance is led by Co-founder and CEO Liz Smith, who has over 15 years of experience in international development, and Co-founder Jordan Kassalow, an eye doctor and entrepreneur with over 20 years of experience. The organization's board of directors includes notable figures such as Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, former president of Liberia and Nobel Peace laureate, and Alejandro Palacios, former Director of GAVI & The Global Partnership for Education. Through its collaborative approach and strategic initiatives, EYElliance continues to work towards its goal of providing equitable access to eyeglasses for all individuals, regardless of their geographic location or economic status.