More than two billion people globally live with poor vision. And of this number, around half do not even have access to a simple pair of glasses that can correct it.
When I found out just how many people globally lived with uncorrected poor vision, I was astonished – not just by the scale of the problem, but also by how long it had been hiding in plain sight. Here was one of the world’s most common and correctable ailments, yet – until recently – it remained almost entirely absent from the global development agenda.
This insight has gone on to shape the past two decades of my life, and a philanthropic journey that has taken me from grassroots clinics in Rwanda to meeting rooms at the United Nations. More than that, it transformed my understanding of philanthropy itself. It showed me that giving can be more than a gesture or a sticking plaster; it can be a catalyst for global systems change.
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The global aid system is under strain, with major players such as the United States and UK having reduced their commitment to foreign assistance. As Bill Gates recently pointed out, there is an expectation that philanthropists will step in to fill those gaps, but perhaps this can’t always be counted upon.
Rethinking philanthropy
From the climate crisis and pandemic preparedness to collapsing health infrastructure, today’s challenges demand more than stopgaps. They require targeted, collaborative interventions with longterm goals. We need to rethink philanthropy not as a patchwork, but as a source of propulsion: a force that accelerates solutions and transforms systems.
Poor vision is a case in point. This isn’t merely a medical issue; it’s a barrier to education, employment, gender equality and economic growth. Without access to eye care, children struggle in school, adults are less productive, and whole communities end up lagging behind. But for so long, vision correction had little public funding and no coordinated global strategy.
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So I did what entrepreneurs do: I built something – first, in 2011, with Vision for a Nation, a programme that helped Rwanda become the first country to provide eye care on a national scale, training nurses in every single part of the country in vision screening.
This was followed by ‘Clearly’ in 2016, a global campaign to raise awareness, shape policy and mobilise resources around vision correction. Because I realised that tackling this issue one country at a time was not a sustainable use of my resources, nor achievable in one, two or even three lifetimes. What was needed was a systems change, and the entire international community to get behind the mission of correcting poor vision.
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By 2021, that was achieved when the United Nations passed its first ever Resolution on Vision, recognising eye care as integral to achieving the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals. It was a milestone that took more than a decade of advocacy, coalition-building and risk-tolerant investment. And it offered something else: a proof point for a new kind of philanthropic model.
The moonshot mindset
I don’t think of this work in vision correction as an endpoint, but rather as a blueprint. It serves as a case study in how private capital, used strategically, can unlock public action at scale. This has shaped what I like to describe as a ‘moonshot’ mindset for philanthropy: an approach that embraces risk, funds the overlooked, and dares to pursue transformational goals others may dismiss as too ambitious.
This isn’t about blind optimism. It’s about backing the right ideas early, staying the course, and being prepared to fail in pursuit of big wins. Philanthropists are uniquely placed to do this. We can go where governments hesitate. We’re not constrained by election cycles or slow-moving bureaucracy. We can invest in things that may be unproven, but have the potential to change lives.
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And yet, too often, philanthropy still plays it safe. It funds what’s already working, or seeks recognition rather than the type of risks that have to be taken in order to secure the most significant outcomes. But the most urgent challenges of our time don’t need more safe bets; they need bold ones.
We’ve already seen this moonshot mindset taking root in climate adaptation funds championed by family offices, or in health diagnostics scaled from philanthropic pilots. In my own case, philanthropy helped elevate a simple, proven intervention – glasses – to the highest levels of global policymaking.
But the lesson goes beyond vision to the way we see the role of philanthropy in a world that feels increasingly uncertain. In this climate, short-term incrementalism isn’t enough. It’s time to ask: ‘What would it take to actually solve this?’
This article first appeared in Spear’s Magazine Issue 97. Click here to subscribe
