In August 2025 Project Peru hosted a second visit by the Amigos Eye Care group from the Pacific University College of Optometry, Oregon, USA. See Amigos Eye Care. One of their groups had previously visited the project in 2016.
The group consisted of three qualified optometrists and nine students from the US and from Canada. They stayed at the Project Peru refuge and we planned sessions for the children and some of their families, as well as for the staff in the refuge, for people from the local area, especially from where we have recently been building houses in the shanty towns, from among our close neighbours in Zapallal and at the local school Colegio El Dorado. In their four days of clinic, the optometrists were able to check the eye health for over 500 people.
Sometimes queues built up both outside and inside our doors.
Numbers of patients seen included 35 children at the refuge,15 Proyecto Perú staff members, 52 local neighbours, 215 children at Colegio El Dorado in Zapallal, and 200 residents of the shanty town zones in our area.
While they were still there one of the Amigos group wrote: ‘We are having an amazing experience in Peru. We are humbled by the number of community members we were able to provide with eye care and vision services. The hospitality of the Project Peru Casa Hogar was absolutely amazing. We finished up our clinic days – seeing over 515 patients over the two half days and two full days … but the joy of seeing the smiles of the patients that we were able to help filled our hearts’.
Amigos Eye Projects at Pacific University have a strong affiliation with international optometric colleagues VOSH/International who support world-wide eye projects at VOSH. While the Amigos group was in Lima their affiliate, the Student Volunteer Optometric Service to Humanity (SVOSH) were able to help the visitors among other things with the Customs bureaucracy related to the temporary import at the airport of their equipment and medication, and to join them in some of the clinics.
