Our mission is to teach
We strongly believe that the best place to train Haitian ophthalmologists is in Haiti. Economic, cultural, and institutional barriers are best overcome with building personal relationships. While FOCUS works primarily in Haiti, we also work with educational eye care programs in other countries as the need arises.
The FOCUS proverb challenges us to rethink the concept of “sustainability” with an eye towards solving problems with specific real solutions tailored to Haiti while understanding that areas of extreme poverty may not have enough resources to apply “private/public” models of eyecare in which those that can pay subsidize those that can not.
Although this model has been successful in many poor countries throughout the world, the direct application in Haiti at this time has been marginally successful.
“Give a person a fish and feed them for a day, Teach a person to fish and feed them for life.
But what if there are no fish in the pond?”
– the FOCUS proverb