OPTICAL CARE
Our Eye Care Work
Across Honduras, especially in rural areas, low income people lack access to basic eye care services.
Lack of access to eye care services can lead to serious eye conditions that significantly impact a person's quality of life.
VHC addresses the lack of eye care services in three ways:
We Provide Thousands of Pairs of Eye Glasses
We Perform Surgeries to Correct Eye Problems
We build the Capacity of Eye Care Partners in Honduras.
Our Eye Care Work
In 2025, Our Eye Care Brigade provided 1,220 complete eye exams, bringing the gift of clear vision to those in need. Most patients received new glasses, enhancing their ability to learn, work, and engage with their communities. A few were referred for future surgery, giving hope for restored sight.
Through a decade of work in eye care, we have grown not just our reach, but the depth of service. Our volunteer medical expert teams now include three Optometrists (eye doctors) and a suite of diagnostic equipment that enables more robust examinations. This means better pairing of glasses, better identification of surgical needs and referrals for surgery later this year. Also, we are able custom make specialty glasses for some of our most unique cases, such as extreme astigmatisms, who we previously struggled to serve.
Finally, our Honduran staff and local Honduran partners, like Lions and Rotary Clubs, did an amazing job of helping us reach even more rural towns, where the lowest income communities face fewer alternatives for care, helping us get many patients their first pair of glasses ever. That's a life-changing impact!
Eye Surgery: Change a Child’s Life
One of our top priorities is providing eye care services to children, particularly vulnerable to untreated eye conditions. Strabismus is an eye muscle condition, sometimes called cross-eye or lazy-eye. Children with untreated strabismus will usually lose their sight in one eye, and may never learn to read.
In less than an hour, our volunteer surgeons can repair the muscle imbalance, and restore the child’s vision. That’s a lifetime change, and it opens a world of school, opportunity, social inclusion and dignity for that child. VHC’s medical brigades literally change lives!
Big Impact, Small Budget: Volunteers & Partners
How do you change the lives of thousands of people on a shoestring budget? The magic of our eye care program is two-fold: Volunteers, and Partners.
Volunteers for Honduran Communities has mobilized hundreds of medical professionals to serve overseas. Our international volunteer teams include doctors, nurses, opticians, technicians, therapists, biomedical engineers, logistics and support professionals, and more. The volunteers pay their own way, use their vacation, and serve tirelessly for 7-10 day trips. These are highly educated and respected professionals, successful in their respective fields, giving their time, funds, and skills to change lives. As hard as this sounds, our volunteers love the experience - the majority of our teams are veterans, returning year after year.
The second part of our formula for success is our local partners. Our small team of Honduran and American staff work closely with Honduran and US partners at every step. The Lion’s Club in Virginia donate the glasses, while Rotary, Lions, and Church groups in Honduras help organize on the ground, informing and mobilizing patients within their communities. We simply could not exist without these amazing partners who make our work possible, and help us achieve the maximum lifechanging impact with your donations.
One Volunteer’s Experience with a Vision Brigade: