Sharing A Vision With Those Who Need It Most

By Shannon Hicks

Newtown Bee readers were introduced to Jennifer Staple last September, when she was one of 30 young leaders profiled in the book Our Time Is Now: Young People Changing the World.

The Newtown native is also the founder, CEO, and president of Unite For Sight, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that addresses preventable blindness. Unite For Sight (UFS) has already helped more than 400,000 people in 25 countries since being formed in Ms Staple’s dorm while she was studying at Yale University. Now Ms Staple has been selected for a Brick Award, which comes with a $10,000 award for her organization. Jennifer and the 11 other 2007 Brick Awards winners will be honored during an awards ceremony in New York City next week.

The Brick Awards honor young leaders who identified a problem in their community and then “got up off the couch and did something about it,” say organizers at Do Something, the group that gives out the awards. Brick Awards were first presented in 1988, and CNN quickly dubbed them “the Oscars of Youth Service.”

In addition to checks made out to their chosen charitable foundation, there is also a physical award to take home: a framed brick trophy — which looks nothing like an Oscar.

“It’s not shiny and perfect,” said Nancy Lublin, CEO of Do Something. “It’s a brick. It’s gritty. But it’s a building block.”

There are 12 Brick Award winners this year, including Ms Staple, in the categories of Education and Environment, Global Impact, Health, and Community Building. Ms Staple has been honored in the Health division.

Other winners include Ruth DeGoia, a 24-year-old from New Haven, who created Mercado Global, which provides fair waves to more than 170 artisans in 15 cooperatives across Guatemala; 21-year-old Cheryl Parera from Richmond Hill, Canada, who was so overwhelmed by what she learned while researching for a high school project that she started OneChild Network and Support Systems, Inc, which is dedicated to ending commercial exploitation of children around the world; and Divine Bradley, 24, of Brooklyn, N.Y., who created Team Revolution, which provides a safe space for kids to go after school to be off the streets, in a constructive environment, and even be involved in their community. Profiles of all 12 Brick Award winners are available online at DoSomething.org/brick.

It was while working at Danbury Eye Physicians and Surgeons during the summer of 2000 that Ms Staple — the valedictorian of Newtown High School’s Class of 1999 — was exposed to the need for eye care education and screening programs in her community.

While other might have felt helpless to affect change, Ms Staple founded Unite For Sight (UFS). Through the organization, volunteer teams work with partner eye clinics in developing countries to provide eye care and eye health education programs. Additionally, vision screening and education programs are implemented worldwide by volunteers working in 90 chapters established in North America, Africa, Asia, and Latin America.

“It started very small, with the idea of providing services — vision screenings and education programs — for the New Haven area while I was there,” Ms Staple said last week while home on break from her studies at Stanford University School of Medicine. She is a second year medical student at Stanford, having finished her undergraduate studies at Yale in May 2003.

Unite For Sight has since sponsored more than 4,000 sight-restoring cataract surgeries for those unable to otherwise afford their own care, as well as additional eye care for thousands of others. The original concept of providing community programs at universities and in communities where education programs can be offered continues, and UFS has expanded to partner with eye clinics in India and Africa that do not have staffing or funding to provide for poor patients in rural areas.

“We can help provide equipment for several of our partner ophthalmologists in Ghana. We work with them to help provide screenings for poor patients,” said Ms Staple.

With the $10,000 she has already won, Ms Staple will purchase equipment for the UFS’s partner clinics in Ghana.

“That money can actually go very far,” she said. “It’s very inexpensive to provide the eye care, so even with a small amount of money there’s a lot we can do.”

[naviga:h2 style="line-height:10.0pt"]A Bigger Brick[/naviga:h2]

While each of the Brick Awards are accompanied by checks for $10,000, four of this year’s Brick winners will also be presented with a Golden Brick Award — a second check, each for $15,000 — to use toward their organization. One Golden Brick Award will be presented to someone from each of the four categories.

All 12 of the Brick Award winners are in the running for a Golden Brick Award. Four winners will be selected via an online voting system.

Anyone wishing to cast a vote toward the Golden Bricks will need to do so online. The voting is powered by a Yahoo! engine, so a Yahoo! email address is needed or potential voters can go through the quick process of creating a new Yahoo! email address for themselves. Visit DoSomething.org/brick —the same website that offers the profiles for all 12 award winners — to cast a Golden Brick Award vote.

(Please note: There are two award winners named Jennifer and both are in the Health division. Those who intend to vote for Jennifer Staple should double-check their notation before casting their ballot.)

Jennifer returned to California last weekend to resume her studies at Stanford University, and then will fly back across the country so that she can attend the 2007 Brick Awards in New York City on April 10 with her parents, Caryn and Arthur Staple. Then she’ll be back in California in time for the 4th Annual Unite For Sight International Health Conference, April 14–15.

The CW Network will broadcast the awards ceremony on Thursday, April 12, at 9 pm. While the awards have been given out for the last 11 years, this will be the first time the ceremony is aired. The CW has even committed to limited (read: three) commercial interruption. LeAnn Rimes will host the ceremony on April 10, and Mandy Moore and Dashboard Confessional will be performing.