Sight for young eyes: Concordians bring glasses to Guatemalan kids
A Acton couple’s vision delivered exams and donated eyeglasses to schoolchildren in need.
Carlos Folgar can still picture the wonder that came across the faces of children who could see clearly for the first time in their lives.
It was the result of efforts by Folgar and his optometrist wife, Dr. Susan Folgar O’Shea, of Acton, who traveled to Guatemala last winter to outfit the kids with needed eyeglasses.
“We take for granted how easy we have access to vision care,” Folgar says. “These kids, I would show them a piece of paper with letters on it, and they were struggling to see it. [I’d say] ‘Put these on; look again.’ You see this whole face of bewilderment. …. Some of them have never in their whole life been able to see that way.”
In February, the 10-year Acton residents traveled to Pastores, Guatemala, where Folgar’s cousin, Margarita Mazariegos, is an elementary school principal. They brought along about 250 pairs of glasses Folgar O’Shea had collected in her Brookline optometry practice, combined with glasses donated by her fellow optometrists.
Family connections
Folgar O’Shea created a non-profit organization in 2018 and named it after her father — Patrick J Eyecare Foundation — with the intention of doing what she and her husband did for the first time in February. Her father relied on eyeglasses his entire life, she says.
“It sat on the back burner for a while,” Folgar O’Shea says of her donation plan. “It must have been a year ago I started talking to my husband about how I wanted to go to Africa or somewhere else. He thought, ‘How about Guatemala?’ That’s where his family is from. He knows the language. That sounded fine.”
Mazariegos made all the logistical arrangements at her school in advance of the couple’s arrival on February 8.
“She helped organize everything — what dates we were going to go, where we were going to go, who we would see,” Folgar O’Shea says.
With the help of her husband and son, Razvan, who graduated from Acton-Carlisle High School in May, as well as local staff at the school, Folgar O’Shea performed 80 eye exams the first day and 60 the second day. Folgar provided 95 pairs of glasses to students and their parents after those exams. Folgar O’Shea couldn’t help everyone in need, because she was limited to the glasses — and specific prescription lenses — that had been donated.
“You had these little girls with granny glasses on. [It was] the cutest thing,” Folgar says. “They don’t care. They can see now, do their homework, and read the board and books.”
A push for donations
In August, the couple plans to return to Pastores, where seven more schools have asked for their help. They hope to bring a second optometrist as well as more staff, if their finances allow it. The couple covered all their expenses on their initial trip, spending about $15,000.
A fundraiser Folgar O’Shea posted on Zeffy this past spring listed a goal of raising $20,000 for her non-profit foundation, but the effort had a slow start. She concedes she and her husband are new to fundraising.
“I know a lot of people are looking for tax-deductible donations,” Folgar O’Shea says.
“I’m hoping to find people like that who are seeking out a cause to give to, especially locally. If we want to keep going year after year we eventually will need some funding toward us doing it.”
For more information, visit patrickjeyecarefoundation.org.
