(MENAFN- Khaleej Times) Eye doctor Yasmin El Rouby wants people who can't see too well to be able to afford glasses. Her environment-friendly idea - recycling spectacles and sunglasses to restore vision - was the second runner-up of the 'Creativity for a cause' contest run by MondelÄz International (formerly Kraft Foods).
The results of the contest were announced last week.
The contest, which opened in March, received a total of 610 ideas. Four women mentors picked what according to them were the three best ideas. Of the three finalists, Ahlaam Ali's idea was to start a call centre for health and wellness, and Muna Zayed's was "to provide opportunities for lesser privileged women in entrepreneurship and community businesses".
Zayed won, and bagged the prize money of Dh54,980 to get her dream off the ground.
Clear-sightedness
The prize money would have helped the others, too. Like finalist El Rouby who had plans to buy eye-testing equipment had she won, but her determination doesn't end simply because she didn't win a contest.
"I feel in the UAE there is a lot of wastage," says El Rouby. "People usually just stick their extra pairs of glasses or shades in the drawer."
Her idea is to have drop boxes at the opticians', and then direct the donated eye-wear to, say, labourers.
"I have never seen a widespread public health initiative for eye screening," she says.
El Rouby has spent time working in an orphanage in Uganda and testing the eyes of children there. She stresses the importance of early detection of eye diseases anywhere in the world, and says it worries her when people don't pay more attention to it.
"In Dubai you see a lot of healthy, young, gorgeous people who would probably drop off their spare Fendis and Pradas ... " says the mother of four.
"People working in the sun here don't realize how dangerous UV rays are." El Rouby is planning to set up eye testing camps in labour accommodations in Dubai.
"They don't have health insurance policies that take care of their eye glasses."
Since she works at a Lasik (eye surgery to correct vision in which a laser reshapes the inner cornea) and cosmetics surgery centre on the Jumeriah Beach Road, she knows for a fact that people drop off their glasses there when they come out of surgery. "Millions of people need glasses and don't have them simply because they can't afford them," she says. She just wants to change that.
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