Sheel, 18, USA
Basic need(s):
Health
Project:
ReSight
In the summer of 1998, while visiting Kenya and Tanzania with his family, Sheel visited the Arms-of-Love Orphanage. “There were 70 children who had been abandoned by their parents. They were crammed together in a one-story ramshackle house in which they ate, studied and wilted away their time.” Worse, all of the kids were blind and 30 of them were afflicted with AIDS. After years of ophthalmic research, Sheel co-founded his organization “ReSight,” to ensure that other children in the world would not suffer the same fate. Now, as a 501(c)(3) organization, it provides sight and vocational training to impoverished, vision impaired young adults. Relying on its creed that “Vision isn’t a privilege, it’s a right” the foundation collected an astonishing $20,000 in 2008. Sheel’s tireless work garnered him an appointment to the Obama-Biden Health Policy Advisory Committee, where he plans to get legislation passed that will treat the 47 million afflicted Americans—of which 9 million are children—who lack health insurance. “ReSight” has made the whole process—treatment and vocational training—cost only $100/person, resulting in 60 people being successfully helped to date. With the project’s overwhelming success, Sheel and his organization are already beginning to raise funds for a new group of young adults.
