Every day, elderly parents are left alone on the streets, at train stations, or even outside temples. Many are sick, struggling with age-related problems, and have no money or family to turn to. Some suffer for weeks or months before anyone notices their pain. The heartbreaking truth? They were abandoned by their own families.Although Indian law requires children and relatives to care for senior citizens, many elders still face neglect, abuse, and abandonment. The problem is only getting worse.But there is hope. Our dedicated NGO partners work day and night to rescue these forgotten elders. They provide safe shelter, medical care, nutritious meals, and most importantly—love and respect. Through old age homes across the country, our partners give these seniors a chance to live their remaining years with dignity, comfort, and peace.You can make a difference. Your donation will help our NGO partners:<ul><li>Rescue homeless elders from the streets</li><li>Provide shelter, food, and medical care</li><li>Restore their faith in humanity with kindness and support</li></ul>No elder should spend their final years alone and suffering. Your generosity can give them a fresh start. Donate today and help an abandoned senior citizen find safety, care, and hope.

Help abandoned elderly with shelter and care

65-year-old Shakuntala completely depends on our partner NGO, Share and Care, for her food requirements, as she has no one else to take care of her. “When my only child was young, my husband Nadesan died. It was just me and my young son. After my son got married, he left me to stay with his in-laws, and I was alone. I am old, have pain in my legs, knees, shoulders and my entire body so I cannot work as I once did. But the food rations such as the nuts, lentils, wheat flour and rice I receive from Share and Care help me tremendously and I can eat well every day,” she says. Share and Care helps hundreds of abandoned grandparents, most of them being elderly women. The senior citizens belong to tribal communities and have limited access to necessities such as food and medicines to stay alive and well. This Shivratri, you can help with food and other essentials. Support them. Donate now. Donate easily through UPI, all debit/credit cards and net banking. Charitable donations to this fundraising campaign are tax exempted under 80G of the Income Tax Act (India), &amp; 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code (USA). Abandoned elderly supported by Share and Care400 elderly parents abandoned by their children have no one to take care of them and need your help. They suffer from hunger, sight and hearing failure, diabetes, high blood pressure and other medical conditions. As they cannot work and support themselves because of old age, they cannot afford medicines or even clothing. So, they remain poor and alone. Share and Care’s mission Since 1984, Share and Care has been caring for disadvantaged groups of people, including elderly parents who have been living in poverty after being abandoned by their children. The founders, a couple named Carmel and Arokiasamy, aim to eliminate poverty and the suffering of the poor through social welfare programs and education. To achieve this mission, Share and Care runs a program in Chennai and also a village in Tiruvallur, where the 400 elderly live. This program ensures that every month, the 400 senior citizens have dry food rations, medicines and medical care, clothes, physiotherapy, geriatric counselling and other services to nurture them back to good physical health. Need for the fundraiserOne of the founders, Carmel Arokiasamy, shares that the abandoned elderly parents who live in extreme poverty without food or anyone to care for them constantly think about their children and ask, “Did we do something wrong?” Arokiasamy shares that from the time their children are born, they take care of them in such a special way. But when their children abandon them, they weep and cannot stop thinking about them. While dealing with this emotional distress, they are also suffering from hunger and disease. But cannot afford food and medicines. Donate now to help Share and Care provide the abandoned elderly with dry food rations, medical supplies, a medical and eye camp, counselling, clothes, blankets and recreational activities to live their lives with a positive outlook, despite their circumstances.Your donation can provide these elderly parents with their most basic and urgent needs. “Please support our work because this is for the elderly parents who are in great need. These grandparents are bedridden. They need care, love and support”.Donate to this fundraiser by Give, India’s largest online donation platform, to support Share and Care in their mission to provide food, medicines, counselling and personal care to 400 abandoned grandparents living in poverty.

Help abandoned grandparents fight hunger and receive medical care. Donate now

In Vrindavan, thousands of elderly widow mothers face the harsh reality of abandonment and suffering. With no one to turn to, many are left begging on the streets, exposed to heat, cold and rain,Donate so that Maitri can provide shelter, food, clothes and medical support to abandoned elderly mothers now. Give generously.Winnie Singh has witnessed many cases of widow mothers being abandoned on the streets of Vrindavan, one of the holiest places in India. “Children leave their mothers as soon as they become widows. The children start feeling the burden. This has become a practice in today's society that money comes first and everything else later,” says Winnie whose Maitri India, rescues widowed mothers from the streets of Vrindavan.Many widowed elderly mothers often end up living a lonely life and begging to survive on the streets. And Maitri aspires to take care of every widow in need of help, but because of lack of funds, Winnie and Maitri are in a position to do it."Elderly widows don't have shelter. They sleep in cowsheds over sacks. They don't have a blanket. Nights are really difficult for them," shares Winnie Singh. <img src="https://cfstatic.give.do/1abfb906-563b-4747-85b8-8af2071a2856.jpg" />Maitri aims to:<ul><li>Provide shelter and nutritious meals leading to improved health and wellbeing</li><li>Make physical and mental health services accessible</li><li>Offer necessary quality aged care and assisted living support</li><li>Increase awareness and engagement around the struggles of abandoned widow mothers</li></ul>Why donate to MaitriWinnie needs your support to help those in need of food, healthcare and well-being. “Maitri urgently needs your support to provide nutritious food, clothing and healthcare to sustain these widow mothers who are prone to more illnesses as they age,” appeals Winnie. “You can become the family they were denied. Hold their hands so they don't need to beg ever again,” she adds. Let’s rescue abandoned widows mothers from the streets of Vrindavan and give them a better future. Donate now.Our help will enable Maitri to save hundreds of abandoned widows from a life of begging, and restore the respect, dignity, and identity they deserve.

Help provide shelter, food, clothes and medical support to abandoned widow mothers of Vrindavan. Donate now

This is a sample description for Healthcare. For the purpose of testing I will use the word HealthcareHealthcareHealthcare.

Healthcare

This is a sample description for Community & Rural Development. For the purpose of testing I will use the word Community & Rural DevelopmentCommunity & Rural DevelopmentCommunity & Rural Development.

Community & Rural Development

This is a sample description for Elderly Care. For the purpose of testing I will use the word Elderly CareElderly CareElderly Care.

Elderly Care

This is a sample description for education. For the purpose of testing I will use the word EducationEducationEducationEducation.

Education

Operation Eyesight India is a non-governmental organization based in Hyderabad. It is part of Operation Eyesight Universal, a Canada-based organization that has been working in India since 1963 to prevent blindness and restore sight. In India, we are currently working with 35 partner hospitals (including government health departments and eminent universities) across 18 states, covering over 90 underserved districts. We have established 157 vision centres to date and declared over 1,072 villages as avoidable blindness-free. In 2022 through our initiatives, nearly 1,100,000 people received a comprehensive eye examination, nearly 121,000 patients received sight-saving surgeries and over 300,000 pairs of prescription eyeglasses were dispensed. Learn more at www.operationeyesightindia.org.We are guided by our organizational vision “Elimination of Avoidable Blindness” and ensure the best services for the poorest irrespective of their gender, caste, religion or paying capacity. We set up primary eye care centers (vision centers), conduct eye surgeries, provide refractive eyeglasses and empower communities. Our innovative model Hospital Based Community Eye Health Program (HBCEHP) helps in achieving seven of the Sustainable Development Goals, thus ensuring sustainable services for entire communities. Outside India, we also work in Nepal, Bangladesh, Kenya, Ghana, Zambia, Liberia and Ethiopia. Due to our long creditable journey we are part of the International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness (IAPB) and sit in the board of Vision 2020, it is a joint program with World Health Organization and 150 other eye care organizations, that strive towards eliminating avoidable blindness. In 2014, our HBCEHP model received the Innovation Excellence Award from Vision 2020 India.Our established network and experience of working with the communities gave us the confidence to respond to the COVID-19 crisis and play an instrumental role in saving lives.

Donations through Give Foundation, registered under section 80G of India's Income Tax Act, 1961 are tax-deductible.

Subhadip Bhattacharya

Operation Eyesight India

This nonprofit is registered as a charitable trust under section 12A of India's Income Tax Act, 1961.

This nonprofit is registered under section 80G of India's Income Tax Act, 1961. This means you can deduct 50% of the donation you made through your tax return.

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India has over 12 millions blind people, the largest anywhere in the world. 80% of blindness can be prevented through a simple cataract surgery or a pair of spectacles.Our target locations in the selected currently do not have any eye care services. In most of the target locations even optical shops are non-existent. People wishing to avail eye care services have to travel long distances and consult private practitioners in urban cities. These practitioners cater to only those patients who can afford to pay. This means most of those requiring services simply do not access them. 
 The proposed project aims to promote avoidable blindness free villages communities on a sustainable basis through the twin strategies of empowering communities and making accessible quality eye health services at all levels. The project will result in a highly practical model for elimination of avoidable blindness that can be replicated not just in the proposed states of intervention but across other underserved parts of India and South Asia.The proposed project interventions include recruitment of community based health workers from the target communities, their capacity building, conducting door to door survey to identify those at risk of losing sight, developing micro plans for village clusters, building awareness and improving health seeking behaviour, capacity building of Government Primary Health Care Workers in eye care, establishing and operating Vision Centers, ensuring delivery of quality eye care services by the base hospitals and working closely with the public health system among others 
 The major anticipated impact of the project will be that there will not be anybody at the risk of losing sight needlessly and that too on a sustainable basis in the selected villages. Elimination of avoidable blindness, in turn will impact quality of the life of people affected by eye health conditions in the sense that they will now be independent to pursue livelihoods of their choice and lead a dignified life.It is a common experience to find people who become victims of avoidable blindness or visual impairment are compelled to give up their livelihood related activities and confine themselves to their homes. The project when completed will enable such people to go back to their original livelihoods thus making them economically independent.

Sustainable Avoidable Blindness Free Villages

Imagine being a student sitting in class and being unable to keep up with your peers because the blackboard looks blurry. This is a reality for at least one in 10 students across Maharashtra who don’t have access to quality eye health care. That’s why Operation Eyesight India and our partner hospitals are joining hands with 500 schools across Maharastra’s Latur district to provide eye health screening to 64,000 students.  “We know that vision plays a key part in a child’s learning and development. Poor vision impacts how students perform in school and this can have long-term impacts on their overall wellness and success in life,” explains Dr. Troy Cunningham, our Country Director for India. “Sadly, many students don’t realize they are suffering from vision problems. Sadder still, many families simply cannot afford to get their kids spectacles when they need them.” We have found that between 10 and 15 per cent of students we screen will need spectacles and less than two per cent require treatment for more serious conditions – this means we expect that 9,600 students will require prescription spectacles as a result of the school screening program in Latur district.  
 Operation Eyesight and our partner hospital has the following objectives under this eye screening program: <ol><li>To establish a mechanism to deliver high quality cost effective refractive services to the schools</li><li>To generate awareness among the parents, teachers and students about eye health seeking behavior</li></ol>The planned activities are as below: <ul><li>Preparing the list of students and teachers for the identified schools</li><li>Short listing the teachers, training and supporting them on primary eye-screening</li><li>Organizing the school screening program along with the trained teacher to shortlist the students with eye ailments. Followed by screening by the optometrist the camp to do refraction for the referral students. Students with other eye diseases will be referred to the nearest Vision centre/hospital.</li><li>Providing spectacles to the students with refractive error and ascertain by the teachers that the student wears the spectacle. </li></ul> 
 Refractive free schools will give the students the ability to learn, play and develop along with their peers. The school eye screening program will make the following impact : <ol><li>Eye health screening to 64000 students across 500 schools in Latur district of Maharashtra</li><li>Dispensing prescription spectacles to 9600 students </li><li>Training the teachers and school staff to identify and refer eye health issues of the students</li><li>Improve the awareness and uptake of eye health issues among the teachers, parents and students</li></ol>

School eye screening and eyeglasses can inspire new dreams of students in Latur district

India is home to over 20 per cent of the world’s blind population. Approximately 18 million people in India are living with blindness. Sadly, over 90 per cent of these people lost their sight due to avoidable reasons. Cataract is the major cause of blindness across the globe, predominantly seen in those 50 years of age or older. In India, two out of three people who are blind have lost their vison due to cataract, a condition that can be treated through surgery. Even worse, up to 92 per cent of cataract patients remain blind due to a variety reasons. In many cases, people don’t have access to eye health services or even realize that their condition can be cured. If eye health services are available, often times people aren’t aware of them, or they cannot afford to pay for them.For many years, Operation Eyesight has been working to bring quality, affordable eye health care services closer to communities. Our work is critical now more than ever.The COVID-19 pandemic has posed unprecedented challenges when it comes to providing quality eye care services. Restrictions suspended most of the eye care services in India for more than 12 months over the last two years. Even when these restrictions were lifted, many people were afraid to travel to a facility for help, and patient traffic at hospitals reduced significantly. All of this had led to a surge in untreated cataract cases.  
 Our Approach to address the Number of Cataract cases Operation Eyesight and our partners will address the cataract backlog using our community-based approach. Community health workers, trained by Operation Eyesight, will conduct door-to-door eye screenings in the target areas. Patients identified will be referred to a nearby vision centre (primary eye centre) or to one of Operation Eyesight’s partner hospitals. We’ll ensure that patients receive transportation to and from the hospital, and that they receive regular pre- and post-follow up care to ensure the timeliness and quality of their treatment. In addition, we’ll monitor and evaluate the project activities and provide our generous donors with an update.We’re currently focusing our efforts on seven High Focus States (Jammu and Kashmir, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Odisha and Assam) where there is a high prevalence of blindness and visual impairment among people aged 50 and above. Across these states, a total of 5,000 patients living in our program areas are in need of cataract surgery but cannot afford the high cost of the procedure. Of these, nearly 80 per cent may go permanently blind if their treatment continues to be delayed.Goal: Promote cataract blindness backlog-free villages/communities in selected areasObjective: Provide cataract surgical services for seniors in need in the intervention areas.Target beneficiaries:List names of the project with number of cataract surgeries and name of partner hospitals<ol><li>Rotary Eye and ENT Hospital, Udhampur, Jammu and Kashmir - 300</li><li>Vivekananda Netralaya, Dehradun, Uttarakhand - 500</li><li>JL Rohatgi Memorial Eye Hospital, Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh - 900</li><li>CL Gupta Eye Institute, Moradabad, Uttar Pradesh - 1000</li><li>Sewa Sadan Eye Hospital, Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh - 1000</li><li>Trilochan Netralaya, Sambhalpur, Odisha - 300</li><li>Sri Sai Lions Netralaya, Patna, Bihar - 500</li><li>Chandraprabha Eye Hospital, Jorhat, Assam - 200</li><li>Sri Sankaradeva Netralaya, Guwahati, Assam - 300</li></ol>  
 The sight-saving surgery will clear the backlog of cataract in 5,000 patients across seven High Focus States of India. With their vision restored, individuals will no longer have to depend on their family members for support. They’ll have the opportunity to work or help care for their families, enjoy their favourite activities and watch their grandchildren grow up. More importantly, seniors won’t be isolated at home anymore; they’ll be able to participate in and contribute to their family and community. Their overall health and well-being will improve, and their entire family and community will be stronger as result. The support will also help the partner hospitals to kickstart the provision of free surgeries, which will increase the patient flow to the base hospitals in turn adding to the sustainability of the partner hospital.

Sustainable Avoidable Blindness Free Villages

School eye screening and eyeglasses can inspire new dreams of students in Latur district

Promote cataract blindness backlog-free villages/communities

Help abandoned elderly with shelter and care

Help abandoned grandparents fight hunger and receive medical care. Donate now

Help provide shelter, food, clothes and medical support to abandoned widow mothers of Vrindavan. Donate now

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