"I can't see the blackboard from a distance": first check-ups and free glasses for children in Raval

BarcelonaFor most, it's their first eye exam, and they arrive a little nervous. But the circuit set up to check visual acuity, eye convergence, and diopters is like a game, and little by little, the children sit down and listen to the instructions of the volunteer professionals. "Maybe they'll give me glasses because I can't see the blackboard from far away," explains seven-year-old Yovor. Like him, around fifty children and adolescents will pass through the rooms set up as small opticians at the Pere Tarrés Foundation's Raval Socio-Educational Center to help vulnerable families pay for their exams and also for glasses should they ultimately need them.

Laura Carmoni came with her daughter, who will be fitted with glasses to correct her nearsightedness, which prevents her from following classes normally because she can't see the blackboard clearly. Doing the math, she calculates that getting free glasses has saved her about "300 euros, a significant expense."

The checkups are the result of an alliance between the Pere Tarrés Foundation and the ethnic group, which provides volunteers, students, and teachers from the Terrassa School of Optics and Optometry and the Salvador Seguí Institute, providing free glasses and subsequent free visits to specialists if the child needs them. One of the volunteer professionals explains that serious vision problems have been detected in these children, which have worsened their condition due to a lack of checkups.

For example, a teenager arrived with glasses with a prescription of two diopters, when he actually has seven and eight. "It's impossible for him to follow the class," she asserts. In fact, vision deficiencies "greatly affect a child's educational performance and interpersonal relationships and generate learning problems," emphasizes Noemí Expósito, head of the network of socio-educational centers of the Pere Tarrés Foundation, which will continue the initiative in other centers it manages.