Children at Kamurasi Inclusive School playing football at lunch time. © Tugela Ridley / Sightsavers

Seeing is Believing Initiative

As the UK football season draws to a close, we took the opportunity to speak to a player at a local football club, Brighton & Hove Albion, about his sight.

“Our sight is so important to us as footballers,” says Liam Bridcutt, who’s made 49 appearances for the club this season, and was voted Player of the Season by the fans.  “We need to see the ball and the players around us to react, so my sight is a massive thing for me. I have got a little boy too now so to not see him every day would be devastating. I suppose I take my sight for granted, but it’s hard to imagine my life without it.”

The 23-year-old midfielder’s team narrowly missed out on the playoffs and the opportunity for promotion to the Premier League, which culminates at the weekend. People tuning into Liverpool’s last home match of the Premiership on Tuesday 8 May will have seen a blindfolded penalty shootout at half time, and the ‘80% of global blindness is avoidable’ figure on the advertising banners throughout the game. Liverpool players were also sporting the Seeing Is Believing logo on their strip during their 4-1 victory over Chelsea. This is the charitable initiative of Standard Chartered, the club’s sponsor and Sightsavers’ biggest corporate supporter, which tackles avoidable blindness. You can win these signed, limited edition Liverpool shirts by tweeting to Standard Chartered with your ‘perfect match’. It could be anything from ‘Gerrard and Suarez’ to ‘eye care and Africa’. Just write on their Facebook wall (StandardChartered) or tweet #perfectmatch to @StanChart. It was great to see a blindfolded penalty shootout at half time, and '80% of global blindness is avoidable' displayed on the advertising banners at Anfield. You can bid on a limited edition signed jersey here and help eliminate avoidable blindness.

We’ve paid homage to the influence football has had on some of the young people living in African countries where Sightsavers works.

Jesse

Five-year-old Jesse from Ghana started to lose the sight in one of his eyes last year. His parents noticed he was rubbing his eye and was having difficulty reading, so they took him to hospital where he was diagnosed with cataract. He underwent an operation to remove his eye’s cloudy lens and replace it with a clear plastic one. When he was reunited with his friends and family one of the first things he did was rush outside to play football!

Diallo

Eight-year-old Diallo goes to Boloko Primary School in the West African country of Guinea. He has low vision, which means that his sight problems are so severe they can’t be rectified with glasses. His school is part of a Sightsavers project that supports children who are visually impaired to attend regular schools and study alongside their sighted friends. Diallo was finding it frustrating that he wasn’t able to join his friends when they played football at lunch times.

“I like playing football, but it is hard, because I can’t see the football properly,” he said. “I try to play but often I just guess when I’m kicking.”

All it took was a football with a bell in it to allow him to join in. He immediately ran outside with his friend Ussef to try it out, and now says: “I’m going to be better at playing. Now I can hear the ball, I won’t miss kicking and my team will win!”

Adolf

Adolf from Tanzania has slightly better vision that Diallo, and is just about able to see the football when he plays with his friends. In fact, he says he wants to be a famous footballer when he grows up! Adolf goes to a Sightsavers-supported school which also practises inclusive education, where children with sight problems study alongside sighted students. We believe that helps children who are blind or have low vision to grow up feeling like equal and valuable members of their communities.  

Kamurasi Inclusive School

Kamurasi is an inclusive school we support in Uganda. At lunch times, the children gather round the football pitch and practise taking penalties (pictured above)! There are twelve children who are blind or have low vision that attend the school, where Sightsavers built a resource centre where children with disabilities go to have extra lessons in things like Braille and sign language. We have also equipped the school with computers and Braille materials.

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