The FINANCIAL — Seeing is Believing, Standard Chartered’s global collaboration with the International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness (IAPB) launched a new USD3 million fund to support the development of innovation in eye health, according to Standard Chartered, an international banking group.
The fund will be open to not-for-profits, NGOs, research institutes, universities and individual innovators from across the world. Funding will support projects aimed at piloting or scaling up new ideas for delivering eye health in poor and middle-income countries. The innovations could take the form of new products or technology, or alternatively operating models or business models with the potential to provide more effective, less costly and more sustainable approaches to eye health. The fund is also open to proposals for the development and scale up of technology to enable blind and visually impaired people to be more independent, according to Standard Chartered.
“Funders have an important role in supporting the development of new thinking, research and products in the causes they support. Too often charitable funders expect 100% certainty of impact from their funding, stifling innovation. We hope this fund will help create real impact in poor and middle-income countries by reaching out to individuals and organisations who may have new and better solutions for eye health,” said Richard Meddings, Group Finance Director, Standard Chartered and Chairman, Seeing is Believing.
“Since VISION2020, the global campaign to eliminate avoidable blindness, was launched back in 1999, we have made strong progress despite projections that global blindness would double by 2020. Innovations that dramatically reduced the cost of treating conditions such as cataract, as well as the discovery that diseases such as river blindness and trachoma could be treated with readily available drugs, have made a big difference. Yet, if we are to meet our goal of eliminating avoidable blindness by 2020, we can’t stop there. We hope this fund will help uncover the next break-through generation of innovations for eye health,” said Peter Ackland, CEO of International Agency for Prevention of Blindness.
USD1 million will be made available for funding this year. Two kinds of grant will be available: a USD50k grant to support the development of innovations at initial pilot stage; and a USD200k grant to support innovations that have undergone some initial testing to prepare for scale up. Seeing is Believing has brought together an investment committee of experts from within and outside of eye health to advise on the development of the fund and to help select projects, according to Standard Chartered.
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