“Where there is accessibility, there is no disability”. We are excited to continue the Season of Giving with today’s woman dreamer, Revathy Ramakrishna. Revathy is the-co-founder of Vision-Aid, an organization with the mission to Enable, Educate and Empower the visually impaired to live with independence and dignity. Founded in 2004, Vision-Aid’s model includes crucial resources such as braille trainings, life skill coaching, conferences, professional development, technology training and more, equipping visually impaired of all ages with the tools they need to succeed. Revathy shares some of the key people involved, what inspired her and her husband to launch this, her involvement with community nonprofits, and her dream for the organization’s future! Enjoy this inspiring story and celebrate Season of Giving with Us.

1. Vision-Aid is a truly remarkable organization, and we are very excited to feature it in our 2021 Season of Giving series. Tell us about Vision-Aid's mission, and your journey as the co-founder. 

Vision-Aid's mission is to Enable, Educate and Empower the visually impaired to live with independence and dignity. 

India is home to the largest number of blind and visually impaired persons in the world. Despite the many miracles of modern medicine, millions live with incurable vision conditions. Vision-Aid believes in the principle that “what cannot be cured has to be endured” and aims to serve this population of visually impaired persons through a set of well-designed interventions.  Our vision is to create a network of resource centers for the visually impaired, which offer a comprehensive range of resources that include assistive devices, rehabilitation, a broad range of training programs and counselling, all geared to help the visually impaired reach their highest potential.  

Vision-Aid started as a small project in 2004 in Visakhapatnam, India and has grown by leaps and bounds, thanks to the tireless efforts of its largely volunteer team and the generosity of its supporters. 

We run resource centers in 12 locations in India in partnership with many reputed organizations including Aravind Eye Care, L.V.Prasad Eye Institute, Sankara Nethralaya, Shroff Charitable Eye Hospital,  Community Eye Care Foundation  and several others. Vision-Aid also works with several Blind Schools, and community-based organizations and helps them to build capacity. The partnership model helps to effectively scale up the program reaching thousands of visually impaired children and adults, many of whom come from under-privileged backgrounds.   

2.Who are the founders and some of the key people (and their roles) involved in the program? 

Vision-Aid’s ownership rests with the Board of Directors who are elected every year. All Board Members and Officers serve in a voluntary capacity, so that the funds raised can be put to use directly in the programs benefitting the visually impaired. 

The Founders are Ramakrishna M. Raju (Ram Raju) and Revathy Ramakrishna. Mr. Puran Dang is the Chairman Emeritus of Vision-Aid. Mr. Lalit Sudan serves as the President of the organization and Mrs. Veena Handa is the Vice-Chair. In addition, over 30 distinguished community leaders are part of the leadership team and their profiles can be found here

3.How was Vision-Aid born? What was the need you saw? 

The idea of Vision-Aid was born because the founders had direct personal experience of visual impairment and the immense challenges it poses. Ramakrishna Raju started losing his vision at the age of seven as he was afflicted by optic nerve atrophy, a condition which he inherited from his grandfather who was also visually impaired. So, while the vision impairment was a setback, he discovered that with proper support, including assistive devices, training and an accessible environment, these hurdles could be mitigated or even overcome to a great extent. The close and personal experiences with vision impairment got Ram and Revathy thinking about what they could do to give back and make the world a more inclusive place for people suffering from terminal vision conditions, since where there is accessibility, there is no disability. 

4.The Vision-Aid model is to Enable, Educate and Empower.  How do you seek to bring this mission to life for the community? 

The services in the Vision-Aid Model fall into three categories of Enable, Educate and Empower. Programs which enable persons with low vision offer a comprehensive low vision evaluation for infants, children and adults, and provide them with optical and electronic magnification devices. Patients who are blind, are provided with training depending upon their needs such as orientation and mobility which teaches navigation techniques to walk and move around safely. Additionally, the centers provide skills training such as computer applications, mobile technologies, Braille training, Spoken English and advanced courses like Digital Accessibility Testing and Training, Python Programming to name a few and more skills training are being added on a continuous basis. Please see the graphic for more.

5.As the platform for women dreamers, what is your next big dream for Visionaid? What are some future initiatives you can share with us?  

As we enter 2022, Vision-Aid is focused on the following five key objectives:  

• Creating model Resource Centers of Excellence offering Vision Rehabilitation at scale in large Eye Hospitals 

• Position Vision-Aid to be a Premier Training Organization for the Visually Impaired in India

• Building the capacity of Blind Schools that serve many visually impaired students 

• Using technology including smart phones to enable the visually impaired become independent 

• Investing in Innovation and R&D in cutting-edge areas like AI-applications for the visually impaired 

Thank you Revathy for sharing your inspiring story with us! We are excited to have you in our empowered women’s network!

Bio: Revathy Ramakrishna is the Co-Founder and volunteer Vice-President for Vision-Aid, a 501(c)(3) non-profit which she and her husband Ramakrishna Raju co-founded in 2004. Vision-Aid (www.VisionAid.org) serves the visually impaired by enabling, educating and empowering them to live their lives with independence and dignity and strongly believes that it is better to light a single candle than to curse the darkness. She has also volunteered at other non-profits like Shishu Bharati and IAL. She was honored to receive the 2019 Woman of the Year award from India New England News for her work with Vision-Aid.An Electronics engineer and Health Informatics professional by training, she also works as a Manager at Fresenius Medical Care North America, where she oversees the Government Reporting and Clinical Informatics projects related to specific CMS and CDC mandated quality and reimbursement initiatives for improving the outcomes for patients with chronic renal conditions.

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