Delivering for Good: Delivering Sight Worldwide | News Direct

Delivering for Good: Delivering Sight Worldwide

News release by FedEx Corporation

facebook icon linkedin icon twitter icon pinterest icon email icon Northampton, MA | May 24, 2022 02:01 PM Eastern Daylight Time

Photo credit: Richard Jorgenson
Photo credit: Richard Jorgenson

For over 30 years, FedEx has helped Orbis eliminate avoidable blindness in low- and middleincome countries and break the vicious cycle of blindness and poverty. Orbis operates a donated former-FedEx cargo plane that was converted into an engineering marvel: the Flying Eye Hospital. The Orbis Flying Eye Hospital is a fully self-contained mobile teaching hospital that travels to areas with the greatest need to save sight for patients and train local eye care professionals. Surgeries are performed free of charge by some of the world’s best ophthalmologists. FedEx not only donated the plane but also donates team member skills and expertise, including volunteer pilots, pilot training, aircraft maintenance, cash grants and charitable shipping. In FY21 alone, FedEx provided $100K worth of in-kind pilot training and $25K worth of in-kind crewmember pilot time to Orbis.

Virtual plane pull for sight

FedEx Canada team members joined forces with more than 500 other Canadians from coast to coast to raise nearly $200,000 for Orbis’s iconic Flying Eye Hospital through a virtual version of the annual Plane Pull for Sight event. The hospital is a fully equipped ophthalmic teaching hospital on board a FedEx-donated MD-10 aircraft and fights avoidable blindness by training eye care teams so they can save and restore vision in their communities. The virtual event replaced our traditional in-person Plane Pull for Sight events during COVID-19 and included a series of videos and virtual flight simulation moments, combined with live skill-testing games, interactive team competitions and even special guest appearances by Dolly Parton and Canadian astronauts Robert Thirsk and Dave Williams.

View additional multimedia and more ESG storytelling from FedEx Corporation on 3blmedia.com