If you’re reading this, then chances are you’ve got a few pairs of glasses lying around that just don’t get worn anymore. If that’s the case, then let us introduce you to Specs for Africa. Founded by Peter and Anne Corder back in 2022, this is a seriously well-thought-out initiative that gets pre-loved specs into rural areas of Africa.
We could go on, but we thought it might be easier to get Peter to explain a bit more himself, so without further rambling here’s an interview with him about the project and how it works…
First off, how did Specs for Africa start? Was there a specific spark that set it off?
We started it having seen the need for reading specs while travelling around Africa over many years and decided to do something to help. We started collecting secondhand/pre-loved reading glasses and sunglasses from friends, family, contacts and so on and it spiralled until we were virtually inundated with people keen to support the initiative.
How do you get something like this going? I imagine you must need to have a lot of good connections and knowledge of the area.
Contacts are crucial. Fortunately, our son Joe works for Safari Consultants—a specialist safari operator who has helped open up contacts across our target countries. We have also got to know lots of people in Africa during our 30 years of travelling around the continent and always try to make new contacts to open up new projects.
What kind of glasses do you need? Are there certain glasses that are more helpful to the project than others?
We’re ideally looking for reading glasses to enable people with failing sight to have a new lease of life. If you can’t see to do close up work, your earning potential disappears and that could be disastrous for families who need to make and sell things to buy food and pay for their daily living costs. Imagine having that sight restored and enabling them to resume work and earning?
Here in the UK we would go to a high street optician, but in rural African communities there are none! This initiative is transforming lives in a very real way—at no cost to anyone.
Sunglasses are also very important to protect eyes from the bright sun, dust and wood smoke that dries out eyes.
What happens once people have donated their specs? There are a few more stages involved than just sending them straight out, aren’t there?
We assess the lens strength using a donated focimeter; clean the glasses and lenses, label them and pop them in microfibre pouches. We then put together bags of 40 pairs and arrange to send bags out with people we know are travelling. They drop them off to contacts in the country of arrival and they are transferred to our carefully chosen community projects.
Where do the glasses go? Are there specific areas you work with?
We have earmarked about 16 projects across a handful of countries—Kenya, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Malawi and Tanzania—always ensuring that we have a proven method of getting each bag of glasses to exactly where we want them to end up.
We insist on having feedback, including photos/video of the glasses arriving. Each community project is organised so they do have access to phones enabling us to maintain contact. The feedback is incredibly humbling and gives us the fuel to drive the initiative further. We now have a steady stream of specs/sunglasses coming into our home where we have converted a room into a Specs for Africa collection and distribution centre.
As well as donating glasses, people can also help as couriers—can you explain how that works?
No money changes hands in this initiative. People donate glasses; we sort and clean them, we prepare them for distribution and then earmark people we know are travelling out to the relevant country, asking them if they would be prepared to sacrifice 1.2kg of luggage allowance to include one of our bags of specs/sunglasses in their hold or hand luggage.
It clearly works, as we have now sent out around 5,000 pairs of specs/sunglasses in less than three years. That is a lot of lives transformed in such a simple way at no cost to anyone—except individual kindness and generosity.
What’s the reality for glasses wearers in rural Africa? Why is something like Specs for Africa so important?
Without our initiative people would simply be unable to continue their normal daily lives and struggle to work, learn, read and carry out simple daily tasks. There are no high street opticians or free regular eye tests in rural African communities—although we are finding that our initiative is spurring some communities on to organising health checks from time to time, which benefits everyone.
What are your biggest challenges?
The supply of specs continues apace and for that we are both grateful and incredibly humbled. But the biggest challenges are getting them from their various points of collection around the UK to our home near Stamford in Lincolnshire; and then getting enough regular couriers taking supplies out to Africa. So if anyone feels they can assist, or knows anyone travelling out to our target countries on a regular basis, we would obviously love to hear from them.
What next for the project? How do you see it growing?
The project continues to grow organically - and we are keen to ensure it does not overwhelm our ability to handle the volume and ensure consistent delivery to the community projects we serve.
That makes sense. Rounding this off, what are you proudest of with the project? I imagine there’s a lot of satisfaction running a project like this.
We are just deeply touched by the generosity and kindness of people and companies donating specs/sunglasses and those prepared to take bags of specs with them to our target countries. We receive regular feedback demonstrating the difference those specs are making to the daily lives of people in remote, rural communities—and that delivers all the satisfaction we seek. And no money is involved from start to finish!
Want to help? Seen are proud to be a donation point for Specs for Africa. Just bring in your glasses to our Manchester store and we’ll get them out to Peter and the team.
