December 7, 2012

Day 5: Team Richmond Grew Our Hearts (click to view photos)

By sara

It's our last day at clinic and as our bus pulled away from hotel this morning, it kind of hits you that this is the last time we're going to clinic.  We have had such a great time here with the kids and making a difference.  We worked as a team immediately.  Everyone always pitched in to help.  If your station was done, people automatically looked to places that could use help. It was this great team work that allowed us to see a total of 921 kids and make glasses for 756 of them!!!!  82% of the kids we saw needed glasses! 

I'm sitting in the back room our of clinic writing down these last, but certainly not final thoughts, from this clinic.  The children have gone back to school.  The only sounds left are those from the lab edging the lenses.  A real sense of sadness has come over me.  Waking up in the morning, knowing I will make a difference in a child's life is a great experience.  Come Monday, we will be back to reality.  In the beginning of our clinic, Darla talked about how this experience will grow your heart.  It's certainly the best way we can describe that.  Our team will leave here with a piece of Richmond in our hearts, and thus our hearts are a little bit bigger for it.  For those who haven't experienced a clinic such as OneSight, it really is hard to put into words the emotion it creates inside you.  Last night at our team dinner we had the opportunity to speak about our experiences and share our stories...almost all stories created tears of joy.  Especially those who have experienced seeing the world through glasses for the first time, you know what an amazing and memorable experience this is.  When a child puts on their glasses for the first time their reactions can vary...sometimes it's a smile that is as big as can be, other times they look around almost scared because they are trying to digest this new world that literally just changed before their eyes, others have even more reaction by making what I call the Home Alone face (placing their hands on their cheeks and mouth open)...but either way, you've be a part of changing their world.

We were so fortunate to have a great team of volunteers, especially those from BAMM Lions Club and J. Sargeant Reynolds Opticianry. Our clinic could not have run as smoothly without you!  Also, thank you to those family, friends and co-workers who picked up extra duties back home and at work so we could have this experience. 

OneSight clinics are announced in December each year.  Many of us found out in December of 2011 that we were attending this clinic.  It feels like it took forever to get here…and this week went by so fast.  It is exciting to know though when we get back Tuesday the 11th is OneSight Day, where we will find out if we get to be a part of such a wonderfully rewarding experience again. Best of luck to those who applied and hopefully I will see some of you next year!!!!

Day 5 Photos

2012 Team Richmond Core Team
Mike, Krista, Heidi, Sonya

1 Comment

  1. Tarun says:

    I have removed the post liistng for now, while I find out why the list contains pages that do not exist. The archives page will have both the tag cloud and a post list sorted by month and date once I get the list to work as intended!

    Posted on Mon Jan 7, 2013 7:00 am EST

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