Impact Stories

Expanding our social impact in Latin America, the new affiliate will create access to eye health services in the region with a focus on the most vulnerable communities.

On the occasion of World Sight Day, the OneSightEssilorLuxottica Foundation is announcing our expansion in Latin America, uniting long-standing philanthropy and advocacy initiatives in the region. Based in Bogotá, Colombia, the Latin American affiliate of the Foundation and its partners will focus on executing vision careprograms and forging high-impact alliances to serve under privileged patients across the region.

This will support our Mission to help everyone in the world "see more and be more" and work to help eliminate uncorrected poor vision in a generation.

Commenting on the expansion, Anurag Hans, our Head of Mission and President of the OneSightEssilorLuxottica Foundation said: “The Foundation’s expanded efforts in Latin America are a direct result of EssilorLuxottica’s strong commitment to improving access to good vision for underserved communities. Every minute in 2022, the Group helped provide more than 20 people in need with the life-changing benefits of seeing clearly and in 2023 our impact will be at an even larger scale. We are relentless in our ambition to help eliminate uncorrected poor vision in a generation and will continue to be a pioneer in the fight against poor vision in Latin America and around the globe.”

Latin America has approximately 190 million people who still suffer from uncorrected refractive errors.

Daniele Cangemi, newly appointed Head of the OneSightEssilorLuxottica Foundation Latin America, will lead efforts in the region, leveraging nearly two decades of experience directing global humanitarian initiatives.

“The OneSightEssilorLuxottica Foundation has a strong legacy of impact and existing partnerships in Latin America,” said Daniele Cangemi, Head, OneSightEssilorLuxottica Foundation Latin America. “We’re excited to build upon this, by hitting the ground running and leveraging the passion and dedication of EssilorLuxottica employees in the region.” 

For decades, the Company has supported numerous community organizations and projects in Latin America with eye exams and eyeglass donations. Now, with a more established presence in the region, the Foundation will increase sustainable access to innovative products, enabling visually impaired people to "see more and be more" in their own communities.

Additionally, the Foundation has a newly established partnership with ALDOO – the Latin American Association of Optometry and Optics. ALDOO is a non-profit organization created to unify and strengthen the community of professionals in the field of optometry and optics in Latin America. The Foundation’s partnership with ALDOO will focus on a variety of projects and programs working to advocate, build capacity and generate research to close the data gap in the Latin America region.

Most recently in Latin America, the Foundation supported a vision clinic in Temoaya, Estado, de Mexico that served 3,288 patients with the help of more than 50 EssilorLuxottica volunteers. Watch a brief video to learn more about this project:

The new Latin American office is the Foundation’s ninth regional affiliate, with others based in Africa, China, Europe, India, Italy, North America, Oceania and Southeast Asia.

To date, the EssilorLuxottica Group has established permanent vision care access for 673 million people through more than 25,500 rural optical points and helped create 65.5 million eyeglass wearers in underserved communities.