And the award goes to ...

By Little Birdy

June 22, 2010 was the deciding day when we all were keeping our fingers crossed for making the winning entry at the UK Annual Meeting Award Night!

Amidst all the curiosity, it was North West India team who did the winning goal and received the award under category for best example of ensuring eye health & social inclusion programmes are rooted in community development. The special award for lifetime contribution to Sightsavers was given to the longest serving support team to India Regional Support Team (Sahadeo Kamble, Ilda Fernandes, Mariamma Jose, Emily Sajan, Krishna Bhuvad, Shantaram Kalambate, John D' Souza and Gajanan Bandabe). Hope their travel diary on return from UK will be full of interesting stories !

North West India Area Office won an "Oscar" for a range of programme initiatives including CES approach in the Thar Desert, PPP model with SEWA Rural*

Dr Caroline Harper (CEO) with the coach of winning team Abraham George (Area Director, NWAO)*

Other selected nominations from India under different categories are given below:

• Best example of a scalable approach to eye health: South India Area Office for vision centre and paediatric outreach and India Regional Office for Cataract and Diabetic Retinopathy guidelines
• Best example of scalable approaches to education of visually impaired children: India Regional Office for development of new project design to align India Region IE programme with SIM card objectives
• Best example of enabling BPOs/DPOs to advocate effectively for members’ rights: North West India Area Office for advocacy initiatives by DPOs in Western Rajasthan
• Best example of ensuring eye health & social inclusion programmes are rooted in community development: South India Area Office for projects on village EC Committees and advocacy
• Best Programme Innovation: North East India Area Office for VMA low vision programme
• Best Support Innovation: Ranjish Kattady & India MIS team for establishment of an effective information sharing system
• Most innovative fundraising/marketing campaign: South India Area Office for Mumbai Eye Care Campaign
• The most fundraising miles: South India Area Team – 12 runners @ 6K each
• Support Team of 2010: Social Inclusion trainers (Diane, Gertrude and Praveen) for Social Inclusion workshop

This was the first time during the Annual Meeting that a trip to Buckingham Palace was organized.

(L to R) Abraham George (Area Director -North West Area Office), Archana Bhambal (Area Director-North India Area Office), Shrinivas Sawant(Area Director - South India Area Office) , Elizabeth Kurian (Regional Director - India Region) and Prasannakumar (Area Director - North East India Area Office) **

Group of delighted visitors **

*Photo Courtesy: Akbar Mehfuz Alam; **Photo Courtesy: Elizabeth Kurian