Dr. Aron Rose's state-of-the-art office in New Haven,Connecticut is a stark contrast to where he was a year ago.
He says, "My wife, our three teenage daughters andmyself went to Ghana last summer and were able to work in Accra, the capitol,as well as Tamale, a city in the north of Ghana, performing eye screenings aswell as surgery," said Rose. "And while I spent muchof my time in the operating room, my wife and children were able to work inoutreach clinics in small villages to do screening and find patients to referfor tertiary care."
Rosevolunteered with Unite for Sight, a non-profit organization working to improveeye health and eliminate preventable blindness worldwide. So far, the group'sfour thousand volunteers have treated more than 600,000 patients. Unite for Sight started eight years ago whenYale University freshman Jennifer Staple was interning at an eye doctor's office.
Staple said, "When I first worked at the eye doctor,I really saw a need. And then I really wanted to be able to create a solutionto this preventable and avoidable eye disease. Eighty percent of all blindnessis preventable which is a startling statistic."
"Itstarted as a very small idea and a small student organization at Yale for threeyears going into these community centers, providing basic vision screenings andmatching people with free health coverage programs. And then, after developingthis model for three years, I thought it would be terrific to begin to expandit to other universities within the U.S so that this successful model couldbegin helping people throughout the country," Staple explained.
"And then within a few months we had about 25 chapters, and then quickly 50chapters," she added. "And then also began expanding the organization internationally wherethere is a huge need for eye care in remote villages and other locations wherepeople have never been to a doctor and aren't even aware that eye care existsfor them."
AndrewKlaber is pursuing a duel degree in business and law at HarvardUniversity.
He says,"After my sophomore year of college, I decided that I wanted to spend sometime in the developing world. I had an internship all set up in India. Andthen, two weeks before I was going to leave, Indian and Pakistani soldiersmobilized along the line of control (in Kashmir). Fourteen days later I foundmyself in northern Thailand. I did not know what I would do there. I didn'tspeak their language. And I didn't know anyone. But I saw, over time, I wasspending 10 weeks over there, children, young girls walking around the nightbazaar with older westerners, and realized this was sex trade right in front ofmy eyes."
Thatexperience inspired Klaber to found "Orphans against AIDS" in 2002.Since then, the non-profit organization has provided education and healthcarefunding for children orphaned or otherwise affected by AIDS in developingcountries.
Many youngpeople across the U.S. - like Klaberand Staple - are taking on the challenge of becoming social entrepreneurs, byidentifying pressing social problems and, using their entrepreneurial skills todevelop innovative solutions to change society for the better.