Founded in 1982, Seva Canada Society (Seva) works to prevent and reverse blindness in developing countries. An estimated 43 million people around the world are blind. Seva reports that 30 million children experience some form of visual impairment and two million are blind. Seva-supported research has found that more of the world’s blind are women and girls. In fact, women and girls are 12% more likely to have vision loss and 8% more likely to be blind. Seva treats vision issues by offering glasses, medicine, and eye surgery (mainly cataract and glaucoma) to those in need.

Seva operates in 12 countries: Burundi, Cambodia, Egypt, Ethiopia, Francophone West Africa, Guatemala, India, Madagascar, Malawi, Nepal, Tanzania, and Tibetan areas of China. In F2020, Seva-partner hospitals and eye camps performed 88,695 cataract surgeries (54% women and 46% men) and 4,341 glaucoma and other surgeries. It also provided 8,405 people with prescription glasses.

Seva partners with people in remote areas to create and staff Community Eye Centres. Training sessions help doctors learn modern surgery procedures to treat glaucoma and cataracts. In F2020, three ophthalmologists received pediatrics and glaucoma training, five received cataract surgical training and three doctors received ophthalmology training. Most patients pay a small fee for the surgery. The money collected allows the eye centers to provide free care to the poorest patients. Seva Canada does not receive the fees for these procedures because the individual eye centers use them in continued operations. 

Seva received $1.4m in donations and special event revenue in F2020.

Administrative costs are 10% of revenues and fundraising costs are 17% of donations. This results in overhead spending of 27%. For every dollar donated, 73 cents go to the cause. This is within Ci’s reasonable range for overhead spending. Funding reserves of $697k can cover around 10 months of annual program costs.

Charity Intelligence has sent this profile update to Seva Canada for review. Changes and edits may be forthcoming.

Updated on June 9, 2021, by Shira Wine.