The Eyeglasses Project

A variety of clinics around Vancouver are hosted by us. Our focus is to help areas where people are marginalized, having barriers, or inaccessibility to eyecare.

We strive to provide accessible eyecare to marginalized people.

Special thanks to all of our partners and volunteers!

Everyone at The Eyeglasses Project is a volunteer, including the optometrists, opticians, and board directors. Two of our very first volunteers were ophthalmology students from the University of British Columbia’s Faculty of Medicine.

We know everyone has a busy schedule, and we appreciate every moment, effort and commitment our partners and volunteers have contributed. None of this could have happened without our partners and volunteers! Thank you.

The result is that we have assisted many hundreds of marginalized individuals who did not have solid accessiblity to eyecare.

Moreover, thank you to those who work in the background — those who provide medical equipments for us to use and those who provide in-kind sponsorship. Without your contribution, we would not have the backbone to facilitate the clinics.

“This idea came up back in February 2017 when I was looking to pick up a brand new pair of glasses for myself, but then I remembered something; the last pair I bought costed $800 and that got me thinking about something — what do the poor and low-income do when they need a new pair of glasses?”
— Howard Ma, Founder of The Eyeglasses Project

We wondered, do the marginalized people do without glasses or do they use a really old prescription? Howard felt like something was missing there and wanted to do something about it.

A team of a few people got together around December 2017 to work on our first pilot project that successfully launched in March 4, 2018.