Spotlight

The Visionary

JOHN GODOY '80 keeps an eye on'developing countries.

After graduating from Dartmouth Godoy headed to Estelf, Nicaragua, to pursue literacy work with the poor. During his two years there he discovered that illiteracy wasn't the only problem for many of his students. "As I was trying to teach people to read and write, I realized they often couldn't see the words," says the former Big Green soccer player from Lexington, Massachusetts. "They had a simple problem of bad eyesight."

So he did what any history major with a minimal science background would do. He went to optometry school—in Sweden. Godoy had met a volunteer Swedish nurse, Marita, in Nicaragua and followed her back to her homeland, where he married her. After learning Swedish he entered optometry school and earned his degree in 1992. He then taught optometry for three years before starting Vision for All (VFA).

"Since 1995 we've been to around 14 countries and helped over 45,000 people," says Godoy, who works in a few optometry clinics around Ljungsbro, Sweden, and spends three months a year traveling with VFA. "If you take the number of patients and factor in the cost of an eye exam and a simple pair of eyeglasses—bifocal, singlevision or progressive—our work sfarends up being valued at 6 to 7 million dollars."

Godoy usually travels with two volunteer optometrists and up to three assistants, all of whom must raise $2,000 to fund their two- to three-week trips. During a trip to Uganda and Kenya last October Godoy and his team performed about 1,500 eye exams.

While the program continues to grow, with recent requests coming from organizations in Vietnam and El Salvador, Godoy hopes that someday VFA will be unnecessary. "A country really falls back if thousands of its citizens can't see and learn to read and write," he says. "Our goal is to disappear, because we want countries to realize the importance of optometry and to open more schools."