DeVito Lecturer details his life of purpose
Dr. Jordan Kassalow has led a life that coincides with the service mission of Waynesburg University.
Kassalow is the founder of VisionSpring, a social enterprise that provides persons in developing countries access to affordable quality eyeglasses.
Kassalow spoke in the Goodwin Performing Arts Center as part of the DeVito Lecture Series on Tuesday Feb. 25 at 7:30 p.m.
Kassalow shared that his story began on a three week backpacking trip in the Brooks Range Northern Alaska, a wilderness area that rises 16 billion square miles. Just days into the trip, horizontal rains forced Kassalow and his fellow backpackers to seek shelter in their tent.
After two days of confinement, Kassalow, unable to bear his captivity, decided to climb a mountain despite the poor weather conditions around him.
Upon reaching its peak, Kassalow encountered a life changing experience.
”I had an incredible dust in the wind moment when it seemed like the whole universe was conspiring against me, telling me that I was insignificant and telling me that I didn’t matter. I screamed back at the wind that I did matter with as much force as the wind told me that I didn’t.”
However, at the time Kassalow was unaware of why he mattered.
Fast forward a few months, and Kassalow had yet another impactful experience that invited insight into why he indeed mattered on this earth.
After beginning to study optometry, Kassalow joined VOSH, an organization that enabled students to open temporary eye clinics in underdeveloped parts of the world.
Traveling with VOSH to the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico, Kassalow’s first patient in the temporary clinic was a seven-year-old boy that came from the local school of the blind.
Upon examining his eyes, Kassalow discovered that the boy was not blind, but profoundly near sighted. Kassalow found a pair of glasses with an immensely strong prescription and was given the opportunity to put the glasses on the boy.
”His blank stare transformed into the most beautiful smile of joy that I could ever imagine,” said Kassalow. “In that moment, I looked up at God and said, ‘See, I do matter.'”
It was then that Dr. Kassalow discovered he had a significant purpose on earth, and had the ability to make a huge difference in the lives of a lot of fellow men.
Kassalow discovered in Central America and India, the seven out of 10 people that needed eye care, just needed eye glasses. And half of those in need of eye glasses simply needed reading glasses.
He also realized that most people used their eyes and hands to earn a living in developing countries, so when their vision began to fade, so did their income.
Additionally, Kassalow came to know by the guidance of a woman in Western Cameroon that what persons in developing countries needed the most was an opportunity in order to become self-reliant.
In recognition of the fact that most women are unemployed in developing societies, Kassalow thought women could be trained to sell reading glasses and taught how to find those in need of the glasses, giving them an opportunity to work beyond their middle age years.
All these concepts and ideas collided to create what is now VisionSpring.
In seeking out philanthropist George Soros to share his ideas, Soros offered Kassalow $50,000 to test VisionSpring in India.
Kassalow began VisionSpring with 18 women to test his business idea. VisionSpring now has 50,000 women in 20 different countries acting as salepeople, and has signed a memorandum for the next five years to increase the number of women to 35,000.
VisionSpring expanded its business model to offer stores in which eyeglasses were sold in 2010-2011 in El Salvador, making $16,000 in its first year. Since then, five additional stores were opened in El Salvador, earning $1 million in 2013.
VisionSpring believes it can serve one million people a year by 2015, but it won’t stop there: Kassalow predicts that over the next ten years, VisionSpring will be able to serve 10 million people.
Kassalow ended his lecture with another inspirational story of a patient that he encountered in Mexico.
She approached him in the temporary clinic with an old, small Bible clutched to her chest. After not being able to read her Bible for ten years due to problems with her vision, she came to Kassalow with the request to be able to read her Bible again.
Kassalow provided her with glasses that fulfilled her wish and the woman hugged his legs in thanks.
The next day she approached him to say, “Doctor, I wanted to tell you that maybe to you, you just gave me eye glasses, but to me, you gave me back my God.”