Standard Chartered Bank pledges $1M to prevent blindness in Phl

MANILA, Philippines - How do you make a lasting, possibly permanent change in developing communities? You can plant trees and refresh the environment, or educate the people so they can develop practical and technical skills for production and employment.

Or for 450,000 Filipinos, you can give them the gift of sight.

Standard Chartered Bank (SCB), a financial institution that has been present in the country for 140 years understands the value of long-lasting commitments. Upon reaching another milestone year, it celebrates by launching in the country its new CSR program dubbed as ‘Seeing is Believing,’ a program that aims to bring back the sight of 20 million blind persons worldwide.

In the Philippines, it aims to touch 450,000 persons suffering from preventable blindness, 90,000 of them children.

SCB has partnered with non-government organization CBM/Cataract Foundation of the Philippines, Inc. (CFPI) for the development of the program to help eliminate or prevent curable blindness in the country.

“Seeing is believing is one of our more active initiatives. The reason we've chosen to support blindness is we want to make a difference in the business of the countries we operate in. We also want to make a difference in the communities particularly for the very disadvantaged in those communities," said SCB's Jaspal Bindra, Group Executive Director and Chief Executive Officer for Asia.

SCB has pledged $1 million to CFPI to undertake the project that will focus in the treatment of cataract, refractive error, and childhood blindness. The beneficiary communities will be also be oriented on the proper hygine to prevent eye diseases that can lead to visual impairment and blindness.

CFPI’s volunteer doctors regularly hold screenings for eye diseases in poor communities. The organization also holds seminars on proper eye care and the prevention of eye diseases.

Seeing is Believing is an initiative that was started in 2003 and has, to date, helped 25 million people worldwide.

“Through this, we hope to leave a long-term, sustainable legacy with the Filipino community,” said Bindra.

SCB Philippines CEO and Consumer Banking head Mahendra Gursahani said the bank will give CFPI the freedom to implement the program based on its expertise in the field but will coordinate with the organization on the implementation of the project especially on the allocation of funds.

“How they (beneficiaries) will interact with the Cataract Foundation, will not change. Wewill support the work of the foundation and we will develop a plan with them,” he said.

CFPI program director Diane Ureta said the foundation will be prudent in using the funds by only partially defraying the cost of the treatments to prevent the onset of a culture of mendicancy in the beneficiary communities.  

“We will help them go through their consultations and treatments with the help of our volunteer doctors but the entire procedure will not be for free because they will appreciate the effort more if they have a part in it. That way, they will not be negligent,” she said.

In the 140 years that SCB has been in the country, the Philippines has had its share of wars and social unrest but Gursahani said SCB stayed on.

“Standard Chartered Bank is extremely proud of its unbroken record of 140 years of service in the Philippines. It certainly speaks of our unwavering commitment to partner with the country and, traditionally, that has been our position in all the countries we are in,” said Gursahani.

“Even through civil wars, world wars or other kinds of social unrest or upheavals in some nations, we continue to service our banking clients. We don’t get scared easily and we remain true to our commitment to service. This is the essence of our brand promise to be here for good.”

And why not? In the Philippines, SCB has the most influential endorser it can possibly have.

In the later part of the 19th century when national hero Dr. Jose Rizal was taking up advanced studies in Europe wrote his parents to send his allowance through The Chartered Bank of India, Australia and China.

The Chartered Bank of India, Australia and China merged with the Standard Bank of British South Africa in 1969 to become Standard Chartered.

“I received a draft of $200 which when collected in francs gave me only 192, so four percent is lost. With more reason I repeat to you now what I have told. If you are to send me money do it by the Chartered Bank of India, Australia and China which is very much better,” Rizal wrote in a letter from Paris dated January 1, 1886.

If to see is to believe, the letter can be found in the book called “One Hundred Letters of Jose Rizal to his Parents, Brothers, Sisters, Relatives” which is kept in the Lopez Memorial Museum and Foundation.