SURGICAL EYE EXPEDITIONS INTERNATIONAL INC
175 Cremona Drive 100, Santa Barbara, CA 93117 www.seeintl.org

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Organizations Filed Purposes: Surgical Eye Expeditions INTERNATIONAL, INC. is a nonprofit, humanitarian organization that provides medical, surgical, and educational services by volunteer ophthalmic surgeons with the primary goal of restoring sight to blind individuals worldwide.

INTERNATIONAL VISION PROGRAMSEE International transforms lives by restoring sight to those in need. SEE envisions a world where everyone has access to vision care, regardless of who they are, where they live, or their ability to pay. Over the past 45 years, SEE has restored sight to over half a million people around the world. During 2019, our volunteers performed more than 60,000 major eye surgeries and 96,000 eye exams, in 46 countries.Care is provided free of charge to the patient thanks to our valued donors, crucial volunteer medical teams, and global partners. When preventable blindness is left untreated, independence is lost not only by the afflicted individual, but also by his or her family and caretakers; approximately 75% of visually impaired people require assistance with everyday tasks. The services provided by see empower our patients and their families to fully contribute to their communities, and return to active participation in life and society.

SANTA BARBARA VISION CARE PROGRAMSEE serves its local community through its Santa Barbara Vision Care Program. In 2019, more than 7,000 people received free eye care from the program. Since the inception of the program, we have served more than 64,000 low-income, uninsured Santa Barbara county community members. The program offers safety-net vision care services throughout the county. In addition to providing eye exams, prescriptions, vouchers for glasses, and medications; additional treatments and intensive eye surgeries are coordinated through a network of local volunteer eye surgeons.

EDUCATION DIVISIONSEE offers courses on Manual Small Incision Cataract Surgery (MSICS) that is a low-cost, low-tech form of cataract extraction that saves time, money, and energy should phacoemulsification not be an option or the equipment breaks down. Due to the nature of cataracts in areas where we work (hard, dense, and mature), surgeons are unable to use the same measures to remove the cataracts that they would in the US. Since 2006, we have been providing educational opportunities to ophthalmologists and residents in their final year of school through these courses. We offer two levels of training: Level 1 MSICS courses is a lecture and wet-lab for those new to the technique and Level 2 MSICS courses are supervised hands-on surgery in the field. In 2019, SEE held 36 MSICS courses and trained 205 doctors in the MSICS technique.Furthermore, in 2018, SEE expanded its education division with the Vision 2020 LINKS-USA program which matches international needs with institutional expertise to create stronger vision care systems. That year, the first SEE-guided LINKs project was established between Wills Eye Hospital, in Philadelphia, and the Rwandan International Institute of Ophthalmology (RIIO), in Kigali, Rwanda to establish the first ophthalmic residency program in Rwanda. The RIIO and Wills Eye Hospital LINKs project completed its first year in 2019.

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