- Initiated by The Coca-Cola Bottling Company of Ghana in collaboration with the Elena Barraquer Foundation, the project sought to improve the visual health of the citizens in the country.
- Ruta de la Luz, a foundation that aims to improve the visual health of disadvantaged communities, also gave free eye tests and donated glasses in these communities.
- In total, more than 750 people were able to improve their sight thanks to this initiative, which took place in Winneba, Ghana
Let Your Eyes Enjoy!, a project led by The Coca-Cola Bottling Company of Ghana (TCCBCG) – subsidiary of the Equatorial Coca-Cola Bottling Company – in collaboration with Elena Barraquer Foundation and Ruta de la Luz, provided free visual health treatment from the 15th to the 21st of July at Winneba Trauma Hospital, Ghana. 319 people received eye surgeries thanks to the initiative and more than 780 citizens received free eye tests. In addition, more than 400 glasses are being donated to those people who need them.
Cataracts are a clouding of the lens in the eye that decreases the vision of those affected, which can eventually become complete blindness. Of the 39 million cases of blindness in the world, 20 million of them are due to cataracts. Luckily, this problem can be solved with a surgery that lasts 45 minutes. This means that 51% of blind people can recover their sight; however, not all of them have the resources needed to afford the procedure.
Let your eyes enjoy! represents the combined efforts of three key collaborators to remove these and other barriers to visual health. The role of Equatorial Coca-Cola; the official bottler and distributor of Coca-Cola products in 13 countries in North and West Africa; prepares all the necessary groundwork for the surgeries to take place smoothly. For its part, the Elena Barraquer Foundation, a non-profit organization on a mission “to return eyesight to the greatest number of people”, contributes its equipment and personnel to carry out the procedures. Finally, Ruta de la Luz of the Cione Group of Opticians, a foundation that seeks to improve the visual health of disadvantaged populations, gives free eye tests and donates glasses to those who need them.
Thanks to this initiative, spearheaded by the Equatorial Coca-Cola Bottling Company and its local teams, such as TCCBCG, free eye treatment has been provided in various countries in West Africa for several years now, with more than 1800 people having received free cataract surgery since the program’s inception.
Working together in this manner, this collaboration follows the ‘Golden Triangle’ partnership model, a structure aimed at leveraging the strengths and abilities of three groups: Equatorial Coca-Cola Bottling Company and the wider Coca-Cola system; NGO partners like the Elena Barraquer Foundation, Ruta de la Luz and Medshare; and the governments of the countries where Let your eyes enjoy! takes place.
“The communities around us are one of our priorities. This project allows us to demonstrate our full commitment not only to visual health, but also to the citizens of Ghana, collaborating to treat one of the more problematic and prevalent pathologies in the region”, remarked Bethel Yeboah, Public Affairs and Communication Manager at Equatorial Coca-Cola Ghana.
Equatorial Coca-Cola’s commitment to the citizens of Ghana, also in the educational field
Equatorial Coca-Cola took advantage of this expedition to donate 9 computers to a group of four schools in Ghana’s Central Region. The handover took place at St Luke’s Catholic School in Ajumako, Bisease. This was carried out in collaboration with Labdoo, a humanitarian social network joined by people around the world who want to make the planet a better place by providing those in underdeveloped regions a chance at a better education.
This was Equatorial Coca Cola’s first ‘Dootrip’, as they are known among the Labdoo community, and the company hopes that this pilot trip will be the first in a growing relationship with Labdoo, in Ghana and across its territories in Africa.
