Founders of non profit Share A Smile Foundation, Vidhi Jain and Ved Jain , students of Toms River High School North, spend their president's day long weekend volunteering for medical camps in the Dominican Republic, accompanied by their friend Arjun Sobti.
SHARE A SMILE was founded by Vidhi Jain & Ved Jain about 4 years ago with the mission to spread more smiles around the world by helping the poor, unfortunate people who lack the basic rights of vision and medical care. They organize fund raisers and the funds generated are used for camps organized in the developing parts of the world. Share A Smile has previously done 4 such camps in India.
Lions club of New Jersey along with multiple Lions clubs of Dominican Republic have come together with Share A Smile for these camps through a lot of collaboration and planning, sharing the common goals of providing vision and Diabetes awareness.
After almost 6 months of planning three camps were organised in three different rural areas of Dominican Republic over Feb 16th- Feb 18th 2018. A total of over 650 people of all ages were seen for their vision checks and diabetes checks. A high level of vision difficulties were seen in the entire population and over 400 eyeglasses were distributed free of cost. These eyeglasses were donated by the Lions clubs of NJ through their recycling center .
When asked about their experience Vidhi said, "There were young kids who had significant difficulties in reading in their classrooms. When they were given proper eyeglasses, they jumped in joy saying -wow, I can read now. There were elderly who kept on getting unsteady and falling due to poor vision. They left with such bright smiles because of good vision and proper eyeglasses. Ved said, " This was such an humbling experience, we are so lucky here in the USA, I am glad I could help a few kids and people".
Through Share A Smile foundation, they hope to do more of these camps for the benefit of under privileged in the world.