Eighty percent of blindness worldwide is either preventable or curable students who attended the first Unite for Sight meeting Monday night learned
Unite for Sight, a nonprofit organization, was formed at Penn State by Rachel Dungan (sophomore-health policy and administration and music). Though it is not yet officially recognized by the university, she held the first meeting Monday night in the HUB-Robeson Center.
"The goal of Unite for Sight is to provide better eye healthcare both locally and abroad and trying to prevent cases of preventative blindness," Dungan said.
Dungan, who wants to pursue a career in social medicine, became interested in the organization after receiving an email about it. She later visited the Unite for Sight website and saw video testimonies of people helped by the organization and was motivated to start a Penn State branch.
"It was just really striking because it's not something that had occurred to me before and I figured on a campus as big as Penn State I could find a decent sized group that could create a decent amount of influence," Dungan said.
The organization at Penn State will be responsible for three different levels of activity, she said. The first is to raise money to send to the national organization. The second is raising awareness in the Penn State and Centre County community "that a lot of blindness is preventable and provide educational material so that they're not ignorant of the real issues related to blindness and the diseases it is the result from," Dungan said.
The third is to find a local health clinic and provide outreach and a volunteer service at some point.
For the time being, Dungan is concerned with getting the club "stabilized as an organization" and gaining a "solid support group so that we know we have members to carry the organization into the future."
Potential members were interested in being a part of a new club on campus and the work they could do.
"I was really interested in being able to start something from the ground up and being more involved than just being a member of a big organization, and I feel I haven't helped as many people as I could have since I've been here," Matt Pizzorusso (sophomore-chemistry and French) said.
Ariana Papa (freshman-marketing) said she thought it would be "cool" to be a part of a club at its start and thinks it could become a "very powerful" club.
