Eye Check up camp for the crochet lace artisans..

SETU organized a four day free health and eye check up camp starting from 18th to 21st September in association with our partner artisan group Godavari Delta Lace Women’s Cooperative based at Narsapur village in Andhra Pradesh. The women artisans here make beautiful crochet lace products. However , due to the skewed demand-supply ratio, the artisans find it difficult to sell their beautiful products. SETU provides marketing platform to these artisans by helping them to create products saleable in the global marketplace. The craft form is the primary source of income for these artisans. The other available options are fishing and rice cultivation.

Crochet weaving is an intricate craft form belonging to the south-east Indian sub-continent and is facilitated by a good and acute vision. Many of the women artisans coming from underprivileged backgrounds practice the art form but in the absence of proper eye care and accessibility to basic healthcare services suffer from a range of eye ailments. It’s necessary to educate them on the importance of eye care and hence the need of an eye check-up camp was felt.

A team of expert ophthalmologists was appointed for the same. The camp was conducted at three different centres of the cooperative located in nearby villages of Narsapur viz., Mallavaramlamka, Dev Meruka and Tirumala Possamma. This was done to make it easier for the women artisans & their families to participate in the camp without having to travel longer distances.

In the first day of the session, eye testing was done. Vision correction lenses were then prepared for the needy on priority basis. And thus, custom prepared spectacles for each patient according to their vision, were distributed free of cost on the next day. Medicines were also distributed for free in the camp. A total of 210 women artisans & their family members benefited from the camp. Out of these, 98 were advised to wear spectacles by the doctors. All these were also provided to them free of charge. Also, artisans were given the options to select the eye-glass frames of their own choice which made them very happy and excited.. 🙂 The camp was a great success and the artisans wanted more such camps to be organized in future.