You might wear glasses or contact lenses, but aside from an annual checkup, you probably never think about your eyesight. But for the 35 million people living in developing countries who are blind, this disability can strip them of their livelihood and condemn their families to extreme poverty. The good news: 80 percent of these cases are treatable or preventable. Half of blindness is caused by cataracts, and an individual’s vision can be restored through a quick 15-minute surgery.
Seva is an international non-profit that partners worldwide to prevent blindness and restore sight. Seva works in over 20 resource-poor countries, focusing on communities where a small contribution goes a long way. In these areas, the average cost for a surgery to completely restore a person’s eyesight is just $50.
MediaMath is stepping up to support Seva in a big way. We first heard about Seva through The Life You Can Save, an organization that promotes highly impactful nonprofits. Seva stood out as a charity that aligned with our own values: creating impact via measurable outcomes. This is an example of how a low-cost intervention can change someone’s life. And it means a lot to MediaMath—it was the #1 supported charity by our employees in 2016.
To support Seva, we are launching an internal program called “Campaigns Count.” For every 20 campaigns in our platform, MediaMath will fund a sight-saving surgery for someone who suffers from low vision or whose blindness is treatable.
We want this program to be more than just MediaMath.org doing good on the side—we want giving back to be in MediaMath’s DNA. With that in mind, and to help keep track of our progress, a group of us joined the recent MediaMath Hackathon to create a feature inside the MediaMath platform to monitor the number of people helped as a result of our campaigns. The widget tracks the number of surgeries we will fund in real time. By adding it into our product, we hope it raises awareness with clients and users, showing that their campaigns count and inviting them to learn more about our program and get involved.
We aim to help restore sight to thousands of people through the program. As MediaMath grows, our impact grows.
Thanks to everyone involved.