Our Preschool Vision Screening team is excited to report that the start of this screening year is going great! We have been very busy scheduling Head Starts, NC PreK sites, and Title 1 PreK classrooms to help them meet their vision screenings deadlines. Over 5,000 preschoolers were screened in September, with over 700 of those screened referred to an eye care professional for a comprehensive eye exam due to possible vision problems detected. Many centers have been reaching out to us, eager to schedule the vision screenings they have come to depend on as a valuable preventative resource for their families. Thanks to our state appropriation and foundation funding, we will be screening over 31,000 children ages 2-5 by the end of this school year. We did receive our state appropriation again this year. Our state goal is to screen 30,250 children in 36 counties. We have also submitted multiple grants in an effort to increase our PreK funding, allowing us to serve more children in more counties. We hope to add several new counties to our Eastern NC territory through foundation grants.
We will continue to offer free screenings in our office for children attending schools that are still unable to allow outside visitors into their buildings or for kids that missed the screenings held at their centers. Our first office screening will be held October 25 from 2:00-6:00. We will continue to hold these screenings every other month. Please contact us at [email protected] if you would like more information about these screenings.
We are continuing our partnership with Delta Gamma at NCSU. We will continue utilizing their help with our Book Reading Project for local childcare centers. This program was a big hit with center staff and children last year, so we plan to continue providing this educational program to increase awareness about the importance of healthy eyes. We need to educate even our young children about how important our eyes are! If you are a local center and would like to have volunteers come read to your children, please contact us at [email protected].
Our PBNC Ambassador Noah continues to serve as a great success story for our program! His picture and an opportunity to give to PBNC will soon be displayed on several billboards across the state. A big thanks to Lamar Advertising Company and Wilmington Eye! There will also be an exciting video featuring Noah and his mom out soon. This will be a great message to share with funders, legislators, and on social media. We will continue to utilize Noah throughout 22-23 as the face of PBNC to help share our mission and the positive impact we are having on kids in NC.
