Surgical Eye Expeditions International Inc

SANTA BARBARA VISION CARE PROGRAMSEE serves its local community through its SEE Vision Care Program (SVC). In 2024, following a rebrand and a move to a new site location in Goleta, California over 7,000 residents of the central coast received free eye care from the program. Since the inception of the program, we have served more than 90,000 low-income, uninsured, or underinsured Santa Barbara County and Ventura County residents.In 2024, the SVC program reinforced the newly reinstated partnership with largest school district, to serve the state mandated grades with eye screenings. This partnership continued to prove the great need of the students in our service area. Our efforts to grow the local program continued with the addition of a Mobile Unit, bringing care to patients in need in Ventura County while moving our Goleta clinic to a space that allows for growth.The SVC program offers safety-net vision care services throughout Santa Barbara and Ventura counties. In addition to providing eye exams, no-cost glasses, and eye drops, we offer specialty care services, that can include surgery through a network of local volunteer eye surgeons, for residents that have no other means of receiving the needed eye care.

EDUCATION DIVISIONSEE offers hands on training on Manual Small Incision Cataract Surgery (MSICS); a low-cost, low tech form of cataract extraction that saves time, money, and energy, most commonly used in third world and remote areas, globally. Additionally, due to the nature of cataracts in areas where we work (hard, dense, and mature), surgeons are unable to use the same measures to remove the cataract that they would in the US. In 2006, we offered educational opportunities to ophthalmologists and residents in their final years of school through our training and in 2024, wecontinued focused efforts of supporting the training of international residents and community health care workers. We primarly focus training of the following, yet have expanded our training reach to support non-surgeons with a whole person mindset in eye care:- Level 1 MSICS courses: lecture and wet lab for those new to the technique. - Level 2 MSICS courses: supervised hands-on surgery in the field.We supported the training of 240 board-certified and resident trainees in 2024, and trained an additional 283 technicians, nurses and assistants. Throughout 2024, SEE continued to support the Vision 2020 LINKS-USA program which matches international needs with institutional expertise to create stronger vision care systems. The RIIO and Wills Eye Hospital LINKs project displayed great success leading to a second 3rd year cycle of SEE support in 2022, and finalizing in early 2025. SEE also continued to work with the second LINKS program between Emory University and Addis Ababa University through 2024.SEE's strategic vision of focusing most of our efforts internationally, was practiced in great depth and with more intention in 2023 and only carried forward successfully in 2024, more than doubling our training efforts. We found success in this change to reach the longer-term goal of supporting the build of sustainable eye care models, globally.

United States Domestic ProgramSEE's Domestic Programs provide essential and transformative eye care to low-income, uninsured patients right here in the United States. The program offers safety-net vision care services throughout the country for individuals who would not otherwise be able to receive the care they need. SEE has been able to assist thousands of patients of all ages to receive free comprehensive eye exams, glasses, medications, and eye surgeries since launching support of domestic programs. In2024, SEE supported over 500 people through our partnership with Federally Qualified Health Centers, with eye care supplies. SEE also continues to support eyecare needs, like our local program through our partnership in Brownville, Texas with Federally Qualified Health Center, Brownsville Health Center where 12 surgeries to non-insured or under-insured residents was performed.