All of us at the Advanced Center for Eyecare (ACE) are extremely thrilled to welcome OneSight and its amazing team of doctors and volunteers back to our community for our 7th joint regional vision clinic. As an eye care focused non-profit organization, ACE has been blessed with a bounty of community support and many amazing local partnerships. But none have singularly contributed more to the advancement of ACE’s mission than our partnership with OneSight. The way OneSight has helped us exponentially proliferate the eye care we are able to provide in our community continues to astound me.

It was our common goal of making much-needed vision care available to an underserved population, that first brought OneSight and ACE together in 2012. The Advanced Center for Eyecare was still a relatively new organization, and fate would have it that one of our board members, optometrist Vin Dang, had the opportunity to volunteer at a OneSight vision clinic in Los Angeles. Joining him was Joseph H. Chang, M.D., a local ophthalmologist and one of the founders of the ACE. “Seeing a child’s face light up because they can see clearly for the first time is something I will never forget,” I remember Dr. Dang telling me, speaking of his time volunteering at the OneSight clinic. Both eye doctors quickly realized that, as much as the vision clinic was needed in Los Angeles, there was an even greater need for one in their own community. With a poverty rate of nearly 22% 1 , a large percentage of Kern County’s population has no easy or affordable access to vision care, and the Advanced Center for Eyecare was founded to help address this need. But as a relatively new organization at the time, doctors Dang and Chang recognized that a partnership with OneSight and its Vision Van would be of tremendous benefit to ACE and our community.

Dawn Yager, OneSight’s wonderful vision clinic manager, was incredibly receptive to the idea of teaming up with ACE to bring “EyeLeen” the Vision Van to Kern County. Her passion and dedication to OneSight’s mission immediately endeared her to me and everyone at ACE, and we quickly became a vision clinic dream-team. In November of 2012, OneSight and ACE held our first joint one-day vision clinic at Wingland Elementary in Oildale. That day, doctors and volunteers provided free eye exams and glasses to around 65 pre-screened students from the Standard School District. The community’s response was phenomenal, and to our delight Dawn immediately began advocating for bringing the vision van back for a second clinic, which was held in February 2013. This time, “EyeLeen” and the volunteers gave the gift of sight to 85 students from the same school district. Following these two successful clinics, and recognizing that there remained a considerable need in Kern County, Dawn and I decided to expand the clinic’s reach and duration for the following year. Over the course of five days in January 2014, EyeLeen and its team of OneSight and ACE volunteers providing free eye exams and glasses to 425 students from the Panama Buena-Vista, Bakersfield City, Delano, Lamont, Arvin, Grimmway Academy, and Standard School Districts. It is hard to understate the immensely positive impact OneSight and ACE made that year on the lives of so many local children, many of whom had likely been quietly struggling with their vision for years.

After the first three exceedingly successful vision clinics, OneSight and ACE sought to challenge ourselves to help even more local children in 2015. In order to accomplish our lofty goal, Dawn and I had to innovate and come up with a new approach for our vision clinic. After some discussion, we decided that inviting children to a central location would allows us to see a greater number of them. From March 2nd to the 6th, six major school districts bussed a total of 1,100 pre-screened students to the Kern County Fairgrounds to receive their free eye exams and eyewear. This approach worked so well, that in January of 2016, at East Hills Mall, OneSight and ACE were able to help 1,600 students from the Panama Buena-Vista, Bakersfield City, Delano, South Kern, Wasco, Greenfield, Lost Hills, McFarland and Standard School Districts over the course of five days. Unfortunately, our new centralized approach also presented some challenges. Kern County is the third largest county in California 2 , covering roughly 8,132 square miles 3 . This can make transporting students from outlying cities arduous and time-consuming for school districts. So, in an effort to address this issue while also continuing to grow the number of students we can help, Dawn and I developed a new “hub-and-spoke” model for the 2017 regional vision clinic. In this model, one team of doctors and volunteers formed the “hub,” seeing students from nearby school districts at East Hills Mall. A second team in the vision van visited multiple outlying locations, the “spokes”, including Lamont, Taft, Lost Hills and Lake Isabella. With this novel and innovative approach, OneSight and ACE were able to improve the lives of 2,300 students throughout Kern County last year.

2017 also marked a whole new chapter in ACE’s partnership with OneSight. Over the years it had become clear that the need for eye care in Kern County was far greater than what ACE and the annual OneSight vision clinics could address. The Bakersfield City School District alone has roughly 30,000 elementary- and middle-school students, many of whom have no access to eye exams and glasses. Inspired by OneSight’s vision center at Oyler School in Cincinnati, Dawn suggested we submit a grant proposal that would help ACE begin to tackle our local vision care crisis in a more sustainable way. Her assistance in championing the proposal was absolutely amazing, and there is no doubt in my mind that she played a huge role in making this grant possible for ACE. As a result of her work, OneSight generously provided equipment and first-year funding for ACE and the Bakersfield City School District to open three year-round school-based vision centers, a first in California. And the success of these self-sustaining centers has been amazing. Since their soft opening in early 2017, ACE doctors have been able to provide nearly 3,400 eye exams and over 1,700 pairs of glasses to students from the Bakersfield City School District, all at no cost to the families.

Thanks to OneSight, new opportunities to help local school children abound in 2018. During the upcoming visit of vision van “EyeLeen”, we look forward to changing the lives of around 700 students from Lake Isabella, Taft, Lamont and Arvin. And with OneSight’s continued generosity and Dawn’s ongoing mentorship and support, we’re excited to be able to open a new school-based vision center in April. Hosted at Pioneer School in Delano, about 30 miles north of Bakersfield, this new self-sustaining center will provide much-needed year-round access to no-cost eye exams and glasses for the almost 7,300 students of the Delano Union Elementary School District. There is no doubt in my mind that the impact on this largely underserved community will be tremendous.

Just like OneSight, ACE seeks to address problems for which there are in fact solutions. However, the barriers to implementing these solutions successfully can sometimes seem insurmountable to a local organization, such as ours. That is why having such a strong partnership with an amazing global organization is an incredible blessing to ACE. OneSight’s direct and indirect impact on the lives of people in our community is undeniable, and we are extremely grateful for everything they have done and continue to do in Kern County and beyond.