A Look Back On An Eye-Opening Summer Excursion

By Eliza Hallabeck

 Without Reed Intermediate School students and the Newtown Rotary Club, Reed teacher Karen King says the official opening of a new eye care center in Liberia this summer would not have been possible.

The fund and consciousness-raising effort began for Ms King roughly five years ago. The cause of the New Sight Eye Center also won the support of many donors from Newtown and beyond.

In ways, the trip to Liberia — shared by Ms King, Mary Ann Kane-Cantor, and Jessica DiVanno —  between July and August this past summer was both the end of a journey and the start of one.

Gathered in Ms King’s classroom last week, all three women reflected on their experiences.

“It started for me a long time ago, when I worked with [Ms King] here at Reed Intermediate School,” said Ms Kane-Cantor. “She was always doing humanitarian efforts for one cause or another, and I found out about Liberia… and I had always talked about going with her and accompanying her. This was just the right time. It was the right cause. Everything just kind of fell into place.”

Ms DiVanno, a 2007 Newtown High School graduate and a 2011 graduate of the University of Connecticut, kept a blog, www.eyecareliberia.wordpress.com, from just before leaving until the final days of the trip. For Ms DiVanno, who traveled to Ghana with Unite for Sight in 2008 following her freshman year at the University of Connecticut, traveling to Liberia was like going back, she said this week.

Five years ago Jennifer Staple-Clark with Unite for Sight contacted Ms King.

“She has a clinic she partners with in Ghana,” said Ms King. “The eye doctors from the clinic would go out to the Buduburam refugee camp weekly to provide services to the people living there who were really poor.”

Following that communication, a pen pal relationship with the Buduburam refugees was established with Ms King’s students.

“It was located in Ghana, but the refugees were from Liberia,” said Ms King. “So my class and I learned all about Liberia.”

After studying Liberia, Ms King said her class learned about the interesting intricacies between the histories of both the United States of America and the that of Liberia.

“Liberia was settled by freed American slaves,” Ms King explained, “and what ensued in the country is what led to these refugees living in Buduburam.”

After the camp closed, the refugees returned to Liberia. Then Ms King was contacted by one of the Unite for Sight employees, a cataract surgeon and an ophthalmic nurse Robert Dolo, about two years ago. Ms King and Dr Dolo met while both were in Ghana with Unite for Sight, and when he contacted her, Dr Dolo shared the news that he had also returned to Liberia, his home country. While in Ghana, Ms King and Dr Dolo had discussed the possibility of establishing an eye care center in Liberia. When they spoke again years later, he told her it was time.

Ms King said did not know if she could help Dr Dolo, so her first response was to meet with Brian Amey, a Newtown Rotarian and assistant vice president/ branch manager at Newtown Savings Bank.

“Brian, God bless him, worked for about a year, year-and-a-half, to help us fill out the paperwork, dot all of our i’s, cross all of our t’s, to help to establish this clinic,” said Ms King.

For everything to come together, the Newtown Rotary Club had to agree to be the fundraising entity behind the project, according to Ms King, and the Sinkor Rotary in Liberia had to agree to partner with their Newtown counterpart to oversee the project and all of the money.

Mr Amey explained that the Newtown Rotary Club in partnership with four other Connecticut Rotary Clubs from Rotary District #7980 (Westport, Stamford, New Canaan, and Greenwich), plus the local Interact Club at Reed, applied for a Rotary International Global Grant; in essence the local clubs matched 50 percent of the total grant from Rotary International. The $46,500 grant was the first step of the project, said Ms King.

“Once that step was taken, and that was established, the project took on credibility,” Ms King said.

Following that, other forms of funding, mostly through private donations, made the effort possible. About $100,000 was raised, said Ms King.

Last April, Dr Dolo visited Newtown, spoke to Reed students, and met with local Rotarians. It was then that Ms Kane-Cantor and Ms DiVanno became interested in joining Ms King on her then-pending trip to Liberia this past summer.

The truth about humanitarian trips, Ms King said, is they are hard, expensive, and not very glamorous. Despite the complications that faced them, Ms Kane-Cantor and Ms DiVanno came up with their own money and found their own way to make the trip possible.

Ms DiVanno, who was studying at the University of Pennsylvania last school year while planning the trip, reached out through social media to find support, and said she has many people to thank for making her journey to Liberia possible.

Raising Awareness

 Before leaving for Liberia, Ms DiVanno wrote on her blog on July 26, “I found myself talking about this project nonstop to anyone who would listen, and I started to realize that awareness is half the battle when it comes to preventative health care. I am fortunate to have the support of so many people who helped me to get to have this amazing experience. I cannot even express my gratitude.”

After arriving in Liberia, Ms DiVanno said on her blog that she was greeted by Dr Dolo and his crew.

“I am amazed by this man doing such great things for his country, a true hero,” wrote Ms DiVanno. “He was recently recognized in the Liberian government as the head of eye care for the entire country.”

 When they arrived, the New Sight Eye Center had been open for a few months, but while they were there, Ms King said an official opening ceremony was held. Each of the women looked for donors before leaving America to ensure a week of free surgeries.

The donations for the week of free surgeries came from friends, like Ms Kane-Cantor’s book club members, and more. Ms King’s students last school year also donated. Ms King said she spoke to each of the people who received cataract surgeries that and their families, so she could bring the news back to the people who had paid for them to see.

Ms DiVanno said her favorite part of the trip was seeing the medical setting at the center. She recently worked in the emergency department in the hospital for the University of Pennsylvania.

“I got to view the whole medical part from a different lens,” said Ms DiVanno, noting even the things people complained about varied between the two environments.

“I’m a big believer in preventative health care here and there,” Ms DiVanno said, “and I think that projects like this are so amazing. They are so high impact. Getting to see the impact it had was one of the most amazing things for me.”

The entire center, Ms King noted, was probably the size of her classroom at Reed, and helped roughly 40 people each day that they were there with cataracts, along with the others helped by the clinic.

Before the bandages came off, both before and during the surgeries, Ms King described the stress and nervousness that surrounded the center as people waited. Then the bandages came off. That was a satisfying feeling for Ms King.

Her list of people who gave of themselves to help the project is long, and until the bandages came off, Ms King said the effort had been a theoretical one. But right then, she realized the New Sight Eye Center and those behind it are saving lives.

When Ms King was still working to gain support and funding for the project, she had brought a photo project created by her students, a slideshow of Newtown families going about their day and Liberian families going about their day. The project, she said, proved that despite differences, in many ways Americans are the same as Liberians.

It was that slideshow of her students and their pen pals that she brought to Rotary meetings and that she had with her when she arrived for a dinner at the home of James Sirleaf, who lived in the area at the time and who is the son of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the president of Liberia.

Meeting The Liberian President

Ms King had been invited for dinner when she was still raising funds for the effort and she was one of multiple people who support projects for Liberia invited to the dinner. Until arriving at the door, Ms King was unaware her hero, President Sirleaf, would also be in attendance that day.

When a quiet moment in the evening came, Ms King took the opportunity to pull out her new iPad to share her students’ photo project with the President of Liberia.

Now, reflecting on her trip, Ms King said the country of Liberia is rebuilding itself and projects like the New Sight Eye Center provide help.

The project is not over for Ms King. Donations are still accepted through the Newtown Rotary, making the donations tax deductible.

“This is just the beginning of something,” said Ms King, noting she can envision what the eye center will be like in five years.

Ms Kane-Cantor said the trip overall was emotional. She witnessed, and videoed, people having eye surgery. People who had not been able to see before coming to the New Sight Eye Center removed bandages and could see before the three women returned to America.

The trip, Ms Kane-Cantor said, changed her, and she would welcome a chance to return.

Since returning, Ms DiVanno created a New Sight Eye Center Facebook page, and she said she plans to update it with news about the center and updates on how the new building is progressing.

Ms King said the project started with Newtown children, expanded to Newtown families, and was brought about with the help of the Newtown Rotary.