Outstanding Result for Charity Appeal

Merchant Taylors’ Schools recently contributed to the efforts of many participants to promote the charity Vision Aid Overseas. The initial aim was to collect in 500 pairs of glasses in the “Every Pair Counts Appeal” during Lent. The appeal was extremely well supported by so many pupils and a staggering 3,510 pairs of glasses were donated.

A number of parishes, including SS Peter and Paul, Crosby, St Edmund and St Thomas of Canterbury, Our Lady of Victories, along with Bishop Eton and St Mary’s Woolton, joined forces to collect the unwanted spectacles.

Helping in the project were many children from primary schools as well as pupils from several secondary schools, including  Archbishop Beck in Aintree and St Mary’s College Preparatory School, Crosby. Amongst a good number of other donors who contributed to the scheme were Sainsburys, Morecroft Solicitors, Alder Hey Children’s Hospital and the Walton Centre NHS Trust.

Vision Aid Overseas works in Africa to transform access to eye care services and is part of the Vision 2020 initiative to eliminate avoidable blindness by 2020. The old or unwanted specs are recycled by Vision Aid Overseas, a charity which specializes in providing eye care for those in poverty-stricken countries around the world. The money made from recycling the glasses is then used to fund the charity’s work. Since its inception in 1987, the UK-based charity has helped more than one million people in the developing world.
Mr Chris McLoughlin, manager of Specsavers in Crosby, kindly sponsored the forwarding of the numerous boxes of glasses to Vision Aid headquarters.

Thank you to all those who helped make this appeal so successful and to all that contributed to this worthy cause.