Please help a blind person to see again

Credit or debit card or cheque book (yes, some of us still have one) at the ready please.

Mr Mustard has blogged about the charity Second Sight on a previous occasion.

The plan for the charity in 2020 is to sell 5,000 copies of the above book Outgrowing the Big which will fund 5,000 operations. This is the last year of active fund raising as the hospitals are moving onto self-sufficient and sustainable models.

£20 is the cost of restoring sight to one blind person in Bihar and to help you spatially, as he couldn't have put a pin anywhere near the correct location without a bit of help years ago from a friend who visited the hospital to help out, Mr Mustard has given you a useful map.

 

Mr Mustard would like you to buy a copy of this book. You will enable a blind person to see again and if you can spare £20 what better way would there be to spend it. This isn't a book to buy and just leave on your coffee table, it is also a good and varied read, here is one page to whet your appetite:

Mr Mustard is lucky enough to have 2432 twitter followers, who will be tweeted a link to this blog. If just 1% of you buy this book on this link then 24 people will be able to see clearly again. If you are cash rich but time poor, you might just want to donate instead, Lucy, the driving force behind Second Sight, will be happy and grateful for either.

Do please buy the book or give something. 100% of your donation goes on saving sight, nothing at all on administrative costs.

With thanks

Mr Mustard

https://www.secondsight.org.uk/ 

Junction for having fun

Buy Lucy's book here and help restore sight

Avid readers will remember Mr Mustard telling them last year of a film showing of "A junction for having fun" which sold out quickly and so you may have missed your chance to see it back then. Never mind, you get another chance on Sunday April 14th at 5.30pm as part of the London Independent Film Festival (April 11 to 21) at the Shortwave cinema in Bermondsey.

About the film (49m):

A visiting doctor’s chance game of football with village girls gave birth to an an extra-ordinary scheme at an eye hospital in a forgotten corner of India’s poorest state.

British Ophthalmologist and fanatical footballer Lucy Mathen discovered that her love for the Beautiful Game was shared by Akhand Jyoti Eye Hospital boss Mritunjay Tiwary and the impoverished girls of the village of Mastichak in Bihar.

Mathen and Tiwary also learned that the reason the girls disappeared off the pitch in their early teens was because they were married off by their families. Further investigation uncovered the fact that it was only because parents could not afford to pay secondary school fees that they pulled the girls out of education and married them to older men. These factors also meant that no women were applying for jobs at the eye hospital.

The Akhand Jyoti Football Academy came into being : to break this cycle of poverty, to build on the girls’ enthusiasm for football, to allow them to complete their schooling and to train to become the much-needed future employees of the rapidly expanding eye hospital. Girls from all religions,castes and creeds are part of the AJFA.

What neither Mathen or Tiwary anticipated, however, was just how quickly the footballers, once resident at the hospital, would transform not just themselves but the hospital and the entire village. Rallying behind them are a respected Hindu spiritual leader, the local Imam and sari-clad mothers dying to play themselves. And news has travelled all over Bihar of an eye hospital that is curing the blind, educating girls for future employment…and training up a formidable football team.

Three years ago there were no women working at the eye hospital; today 50% of staff and trainees are female. And a girl from the football academy was selected for the Indian national under 19s team. Tiwary hopes that one day the hospital will be run by a woman from a village in Bihar. Mathen hopes for more footballing ophthalmologists.

To add to your enjoyment there are two other short films as part of the programme:

The documentary Motorbike Midwife (25m) which tracks the Herculean efforts of a fearless nurse, Linda Mba as she rides a motorbike across remote parts of Ghana to save mothers' and babies' lives. With painful births come great personal joys for all, plagued by medical complications, poor facilities and dangerous roads.

and just to complete a varied afternoon's entertainment is a 10m film "One Night"

One Night is a bittersweet romance where the neurotic heroine Simone meets the man of her dreams, Jack, spends the night with him and then refuses to give him her number.

If you can't make the film, or even if you can, please help my friend Lucy to fix people's sight by buying her book or simply sending her a large (medium or small) cheque. Donations are not used for salaries, administration or office costs so 100% of what you give, plus Gift Aid, can be used to help the blind.

Thank you.

Mr Mustard

Second Sight - a film on Sunday 11th November

BMJ - the-karen-woo-award - Lucy Mathen

Update at 12:55 Friday 9th November

Oh Mr Mustard we are totally oversubscribed.....cannot have any more people turning up at Screen on the Green in Islington! perhaps tell people that they should look at our website for further screenings? see Movie Premiere page...also donations welcome anytime!

Thanks for you support

Lucy

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Mr Mustard is pleased to help the Second Sight charity by advertising their forthcoming film. Lucy Mathen is a good friend of his good friend and he hopes to meet Lucy one day as she is a self-evidently a wonderful person and works tirelessly for this charity.

FILM: JUNCTION FOR HAVING FUN

An extra-ordinary tale of how a chance game of football with village girls completely transformed a forgotten corner of rural India and the eye hospital at the centre of the community.

at The Screen on the Green Everyman cinema, Islington, London N1

on Sunday November 11 between 10.30am and 1pm

There will be a Q and A session afterwards with the film-makers.

This is a fund-raising event for SECOND SIGHT the charity many of you have been supporting for years and some of you have supported only since hearing about the Football connection with our work!

Please come willing to give generously. Or if you cannot make it send along someone (you, reading this blog, that is who Lucy means) who might enjoy this Feel Good Film of the Year...and part with their money in return!

Every £15 raised will cure a blind adult
Every £20 raised will fund the cataract operation of a blind child

Not a penny will be taken out for admin or salaries. That, you remember, is the Second Sight way!

Please RSVP to email lucymathen@yahoo.com

Best wishes

Lucy
Junction for Having Fun info.doc

Mr Mustard hopes that your diary permits you to go along.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard