Meet Jennifer Hyde, opticianry student at Benjamin Franklin Institute of Technology in Massachusetts.
Jennifer Hyde was inspired to change careers and move from the environmental field to international public health/eye care by observing the discard of used but functional eyeglasses in the U.S.
Hyde received a B.S. from Bates College in Environmental Studies and a Masters in City Planning from M.I.T. She previously worked in the field of solid waste management and recycling. Currently, she is pursuing a degree in opticianry at the Benjamin Franklin Institute of Technology in Boston and has participated in two mission trips to Haiti, sponsored by Volunteer Optometric Services to Humanity (VOSH), in 2015 and 2016.
“As a strong myope, the idea of not having access to eyeglasses is really unthinkable,” she says. According to the World Health Organization, almost one billion people on earth cannot afford or do not have access to eyeglasses. As she observed as a Peace Corps volunteer in Zaire (now Congo), this contributes to a family’s poverty as adults lacking the vision correction they need cannot perform in their jobs or even get some jobs, children cannot see the blackboard in school or read easily, and sometimes children have to stay home from school with an elderly family member who is blind.
Zoom ahead another thirty years and imagine her dismay upon learning that unused eyeglass lenses and often eyeglasses are disposed of this country. After researching more about this problem (both the waste and the need), she signed up for a VOSH mission to Haiti. While preparing for this trip, she had the good fortune of meeting the inspirational Blair Wong, program director at Ben Franklin. One thing lead to another and Blair convinced her that getting a degree in opticianry was just the technical background needed to launch herself into a second career of helping those in need get access to eyeglasses. “Everyone in the world, rich or poor, deserves the right to see,” she says. “And we, as opticians, have the tools to help them.”