Our People section introduces you to the people in Bangladesh who have been helped by our partner ORBIS International, the non-profit organisation that has been saving sight and helping the blind for more than 30 years. These people suffered from preventable blindness and have been saved by a cataract operation or received a pair of glasses through ORBIS National Childhood Blindness Project (NCBP) two causes IWISHUSUN supports!

Photo: ORBIS.

Today is World Sight Day is today! Our eyesight is a gift, one of the greatest we can imagine and without it we would surely experience the world in different ways. 39 million people miss the wonderful and essential experience of seeing because they are blind. 80 percent of these could have been helped by operations and medical care though. They suffered from preventable blindness but often have little access to medicine or the means to pay for an operation and simply go blind. This is completely unnecessary! In cooperation with our non-profit partner organisation ORBIS International we attend to these 80 percent and therefore we need your help! Help us to decrease this number and save an eyesight with every item you buy here.

Remember the value of our ability to see! Today is a very special day to remember the importance of sight - World Sight Day is the international day of awareness to focus global attention on blindness and visual impairment. This year it falls on October 10, 2013. For this reason ORBIS offers a lot of different opportunities to show awareness and empathy but also here you can easily make a difference through IWISHUSUN, too.

Do good and feel good at the same time! IWISHUSUN provides the opportunity to receive a high quality product for a fair price, at the same time as supporting a good cause in those countries in which the fashion world and we produce our products. Browse our online shop, decide in favour of one our our logo T-shirts, our down jackets, our bags or get one of the last owl print T-shirts which were released in collaboration with Milan-based multi talent and found of County of Milan, Marcelo Burlon and save another person’s eyesight because with every IWISHUSUN product sold either a cataract operation or a pair of glasses for a school child will be financed via our partner ORBIS. That way we all profit.

100 percent of our profit go to charity!

2nd photo via ORBIS: Sean Breithaupt + Yvette Monahan Photography.

Our People section introduces you to the people in Bangladesh who have been helped by our partner ORBIS International, the non-profit organisation that has been saving sight and helping the blind for more than 30 years. These people suffered from preventable blindness and have been saved by a cataract operation or received a pair of glasses through ORBIS National Childhood Blindness Project (NCBP) two causes IWISHUSUN supports!

Photo: ORBIS.

Today TED, the nonprofit organisation devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading which has brought together people from technology, entertainment and design since 1984, dedicates six talks to one single topic – a topic that is essential for IWISHUSUN too: blindness. In the case of TED their speakers examine how technology is changing blindness.

All in all we get to see and hear six talks on how those who can’t see can drive cars, take photographs and more. So Ron McCallum’s moving story is just one out of six and we recommend not to miss any of these videos. See the Mc Callum’s speech above and check out the other talks here.

Pic: Screenshot / youtube.

This is a truly exceptional story: Pete Eckert didn’t take photography seriously. Until he went totally blind. Eckert was trained in sculpture and industrial design and planned to study architecture at Yale, but then he startetd to loose is sight. He suffered from Retinitis Pigmentosa and since there is currently no cure for this disease, he went completely blind. After years of recovering and re-orinentation, Pete Eckert discovered his mother’s old camera – a coincidence that should become an initial point in his life. Almost immediately, he felt compelled to dedicate himself to this intensely visual medium despite his devastating diagnosis.

Pete Eckers remembers: “I found the camera fascinating and discovered it had an infrared setting. I thought a blind guy doing photos in a non-visible wavelength would be amusing. I was hooked. I knew nothing about film or manual cameras.” Almost 30 years later, Pete Eckert is an award-winning photographer.

Eckert takes his photos mostly at night, when his hometown of Sacramento is quiet and empty, and he can move around more easily. Although they clearly depict the isolation from the world of those who see, Eckert found ways of turning his disability into an advantage:

I am not bound by the assumptions of the sighted or their assumed limits.

I am trying to cut a new path as a blind visual artist. Sighted people don’t help me make the art. They do give me feedback before I do the final large prints. I shoot the image, develop the film, and I do the contact print. I do what I call sample prints. There is a clear dividing line. I need the feedback loop to afford making large final products. I could cut sighted people completely out of my process. I could do a write up about the event of taking the photos. The negatives, contact sheets, and write up about the event could be the final product. I like doing the dramatic large prints better. I want sighted people involved. It is a good bridge between the blind and sighted. I want to be included in the world and accepted.

. . . Occasionally people refuse to believe I am blind. I am a visual person. I just can’t see.

Also, find Pete Eckert featured in The Avant/Garde Diaries:

Photos: Screenshot.