It is New Sight’s 12th year of service! To celebrate, we are giving a shout out to 12 things we love about New Sight.
We Love Our Patients
We are humbled by our patients’ trust in us. Many travel for days to come to seek medical help and some have even travelled from neighbouring countries. Since we opened our interim eye centre in Ouesso, our number of consultations has grown by 20% year on year! We are proud that with your support, our patient feedback has been persistently 100% positive. Above all, we are happy that our medication, surgery and glasses are able to bring new sight, new life!
We Love Our Children’s Magazine
During covid lockdown, the Samoutou children saw that the children in their town in Congo were locked up in their houses with no TV, no internet, no school, no toys, no books and so they asked their parents Joyce and Henri if they could create and share some activity sheets. These activity sheets became so popular that they became a much-loved magazine around the country, which today has over 20,000 readership and continues to grow! These magazines inspire and promote literacy, numeracy, civil education and general knowledge.
We Love Our School Partners
You know where there is a party all-year round? The 30-plus schools that we get to partner with in Ouesso! Every time we visit them, it is like a mega party filled with fun, giggles and laughter! We love the kids and the kids love us! =) Some kids have some serious complaints though – they miss our teams too much and wish we could go more frequently!
We Love Project Two Front Teeth
We are passionate about helping everyone see – with our eyes and with our hearts! Project Two Front Teeth is all about cultivating a culture where all of us, especially children and youth, can S-E-E :
S – SEE the needs of the world
E – EXERCISE what is already in our hands to make a difference
E – EQUIP ourselves to make an even bigger difference
This project has inspired thousands to embark on fun, creative and meaningful projects to make our world a better place. The latest to join the movement is the Hong Kong Inter-School Choral Festival where more than 60 school choirs are joining their voices to raise awareness for New Sight! It is so super exciting!
We Love Our Community Outreach Program
Some of our best memories to date were made during our outreaches. Screening campaigns in the villages and in the town plazas are real tests to our stamina and to our off-road driving skills, but they are always super rewarding. Community health education through radio, leaflets, posters, and health fairs, is key to break down barriers of fear and miscommunication, so that one can access medical care. When COVID locked the world down, your support opened many new doors of opportunies for us to meet real and desperate needs through our community program. As Joyce and Henri always like to say, the needs are great, the challenges are great, but the opportunities to make a difference are even greater!
We Love Our Community and the Local Authorities
As we celebrate our 12th year in Congo, we must give thanks to the people and the local authorities of Congo for welcoming us to their beautiful country. We have learnt so much from them and the success of our project depends on their partnership. We are humbled by the trust and confidence of the government. We are especially grateful to the Ministry of Health for their help and support especially in facilitating all our containers to bring essential clinical supplies, medicine, equipment, as well as construction materials. We look forward to our continual partnership in building this vision together.
We Love Our Training School and Interns
At the heart of New Sight is the passion to empower the local community through skills and knowledge transfer. To this end, we have established programs such as introductory courses, full-time theory and practical classes, on-the-job training and continual professional development in both clinical and non-clinical domains, such as administration, logistics and even cleaning! We are especially proud of our clinical students who have persevered and are now working alongside us as our interns!
We Love Our Staff in Congo
As we set up clinical operations and a construction project in Ouesso, we expected New Sight could provide much-needed job opportunities where the national unemployment rate is high. What we hoped would organically happen was for interpersonal relationships to be built among our local staff. Today, our staff calls themselves “la famille de New Sight”, that is, the New Sight family! We appreciate our local staff who make this project possible and we are excited to see how together, our New Sight family can grow in our capacity to serve the country.
We Love Our Worldwide Team
One of the things that we love most about New Sight has got to be the privilege of meeting, serving and doing life with some of the best people from all over the world. We are so blessed to have such an amazing team of staff and volunteers who always go above and beyond, and who just keep blowing us away with their kindness, passion and dedication! How true it is that “teamwork makes the dream work”!
We Love Our Visiting Volunteers
We love and treasure our visiting volunteers! We are so thankful for everyone who came all the way to Congo to bring such invaluable help for days, weeks, months or years! We are excited to welcome at least four short-term mission teams this year – our first visits since the pandemic! We have a huge and desperate need for personnel to join us long-term on the field in Congo to fill important gaps in maintenance, administration, finance, human resources and medical work. Please pray for that need! And why not consider coming yourselves? For sure it will be an unforgettable trip!
We Love Our Supporters
We know we are biased but we have the best supporters in the world! We simply cannot do what we do without supporters like you. Your encouragement, donations, prayers, ‘likes’ and ‘shares’ are the ingredients that keep New Sight alive and well! We are also humbled by the support of many organisations such as foundations, churches, schools, businesses as well as our pro-bono partners. Thank you for empowering us to serve!
We Love Our Future Hospital
There are so many things that we love about New Sight. We really cannot name them all. To wrap up, we must include our new hospital! The eye block is already 100% complete structurally, and the interiors are already complete at 85%! This really is nothing short of a miracle and this miracle came about because of supporters and donors like you. This new facility, with so much more land still to be developed, will allow New Sight to make an even bigger impact. The future is indeed bright and hopeful!