Dr. George Thorne of Eye Physicians of Austin talks about what his nonprofit needs this holiday season.
Q: Tell us a little bit about your organization or who you guys help.
A: You know, it’s real interesting that many people think that there is no way that they can help or anything they could do to be of benefits to anybody else. And that’s kind of not correct. And one thing we like to do is encourage people to donate glasses or something really simple as a beginning to help them to help other people, an act that you wouldn’t think would be important is very important.
Q: How so? Where do these donated glasses go?
A: Dr. Rock started this program in August in 1962, it’s called Recycled Joy, and he’s collected glasses in our office for that many years and sent hundreds of thousands of pairs of glasses overseas. And what happens is people who can’t even get a pair of glasses can use your old glasses and being sure that the data base is correct with what the power of those glasses is allows to match a fairly good correction for someone who doesn’t have a pair of glasses to your old glasses. They can really help them.
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Q: Sounds like something so simple. What kind of joy does it bring to people.
A: How would you be if you got out of bed in the morning and couldn’t find your glasses? So a lot of these people really don’t have any way to get a pair of glasses and have never had one and it makes their life much more difficult than it need be. So some simple act like donating your glasses can make an enormous change in somebody else’s life.
Q: That’s great. And you’ve been involved in this program for awhile?
A: I’ve been here 25 years and so, yes, I’ve been involved in it that long.
Q: What does it mean to you to be a part of something like this?
A: I obviously enjoy doing it because I think that part of what you’re supposed to do on the planet is to help everybody else and this is something I don’t even have to think about doing and it really helps people and I think that most people want to help folks, oftentimes they just don’t know where to start.