Bringing Eyeglasses to a Community in Crisis in Lebanon
Photo courtesy United Palestinian Appeal.
For many people, the day begins with a familiar ritual: reaching for glasses or putting in contact lenses. These are small but critical steps to embrace the day fully, with clear sight. But in low-income countries, two out of every three people who need eyeglasses are unable to get them. Women and older people are especially affected, often facing greater barriers to care. The toll is more than impaired vision—it’s exclusion and isolation.
CMMB’s Access to Medicines Program brings relief to communities in crisis by providing life-changing medicines and medical devices, including eyeglasses, free of charge. We recently partnered with United Palestinian Appeal (UPA) and RestoringVision to deliver a shipment of glasses to residents of a Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon.
For Um Samer, a woman who lives in the camp, the new eyeglasses changed everything. This is her story.
Um Samer’s Story: Looking for Moments of Joy
Um Samer is one of the older residents of Burj El Barajneh, a refugee camp located on the southern outskirts of Beirut, Lebanon’s capital. People live in cramped conditions, with 20,000 people (or by some estimates, many more) crowded into less than .08 square miles. Residents must navigate narrow alleyways filled with tangled electric wires, hazardous even for those with perfect eyesight. Shelters are poorly constructed—many in need of repair—and cause accessibility challenges for older people or those living with disabilities.
Yet even in these difficult circumstances, Um Samer has always done her best to seek out moments of joy. She has always enjoyed embroidering, reading the Quran, and spending time with friends in her community. But as she has grown older, her vision has worsened. Um Samer started struggling to participate in the activities that made her life feel worthwhile.
Her vision challenges were easy to solve if she had the right glasses. But all Um Samer could afford was a mediocre pair that hardly worked. As her eyesight deteriorated, Um Samer retreated.
Until one day, she received an unexpected gift: a proper pair of eyeglasses. Um Samer put them on, and suddenly her world reappeared, crystal clear. “These glasses changed everything,” Um Samer shared with us. “Now I can thread a needle, embroider, and for the first time in a long while, I can read the Quran clearly. Every letter is now visible.”
Moments of joy have returned to her life. Um Samer joins activities at Social Support Society’s Active Ageing House, feeling confident in her ability to navigate the world now that she can see again.
“I used to stay inside, feeling down,” she told us. “But now I come here, I laugh, I feel peace. It’s like a second home—I forget my worries.”
Um Samer is grateful for her new eyeglasses. With them, she sees a brighter future.
“They go everywhere with me,” she says, holding up her glasses case with a smile. “I can’t sit without them. I need them to read, to see, to live. May God bless everyone who made this possible.”
Thank You, UPA
Vision loss can be devastating, especially for people like Um Samer who lack access to effective eyeglasses or other corrective devices. Proper eye care is vital to a person’s overall health, including their mental health and well-being.
CMMB is committed to bringing eyeglasses and other critical medical supplies and medicines to communities experiencing humanitarian crises. Thank you, UPA, for being our partner so we could deliver the gift of sight to Um Samer and others at the Burj El Barajneh Refugee Camp.
