Rolled Sleeves Foundation
Coordinates school-community programmes, access pathways, partner relationships, practical support, education, delivery tracking and impact reporting.
Our work
Good eye care is more than an eye test.
Rolled Sleeves Foundation works with school communities and eye-care professionals to identify vision needs, connect learners with appropriate support and follow through beyond the initial screening.
Our role is to help close the gap between recognising a need and accessing care.
See the Vision PathwayWhy our model exists
Finding a vision problem is only the first step.
A learner may be screened and identified as needing further care, but that does not automatically mean they receive an eye examination, glasses, specialist support or an appropriate visual aid.
Practical barriers can appear at every stage: cost, transport, limited services, communication with families, device availability or incomplete follow-up.
Rolled Sleeves is designed around that gap.
We don't treat screening as the outcome. We treat it as the beginning of a pathway.
How we work
From identifying a need to following it through.
- Screen
Identify potential vision needs.
Vision screening can help identify learners who may require further assessment or support. Screening is not the same as a comprehensive eye examination and does not itself provide a diagnosis.
- Examine
Understand what the learner needs.
Where further assessment is indicated, Rolled Sleeves works with appropriately qualified eye-care professionals to help connect learners with comprehensive examination. Clinical assessment and diagnosis remain the responsibility of qualified practitioners.
- Correct
Provide appropriate optical correction where indicated.
For learners who are clinically prescribed spectacles, the programme can support access to appropriate prescription glasses through participating eye-care and optical partners. Not every learner who is screened will require glasses.
- Equip
Support more than standard correction.
Some learners may require support beyond ordinary prescription spectacles. Where appropriate and professionally recommended, this may include low-vision or assistive visual tools intended to make everyday learning tasks more accessible. The correct support depends on the individual learner.
- Teach
Help people understand the support.
Care works better when learners, families and educators understand what has been provided and how it should be used. Our programmes can include practical eye-health education and guidance around the learner’s visual support.
- Follow through
Make sure the pathway does not end too early.
Rolled Sleeves tracks programme delivery, outstanding support needs and referrals so that identifying a need is not mistaken for solving it. Follow-through may include confirming delivery of prescribed support, communicating with schools and families, documenting referrals and identifying unresolved needs.
OPEN AIR SCHOOL · DURBAN · 2024
Practical support
Different learners may need different forms of care.
Rolled Sleeves does not begin with a predetermined product. Support depends on the learner, the programme and professional recommendation.
Vision screening
Initial identification of learners who may require further assessment.
Comprehensive examination
Professional assessment where further examination is indicated.
Prescription spectacles
Appropriate correction where clinically prescribed and supported by the programme.
Low-vision support
Assistive visual tools or further low-vision support where professionally recommended.
Eye-health education
Practical information for learners, educators and families.
Referral pathways
Connections to appropriate services when care needs to continue beyond the programme.
Programme follow-through
Tracking agreed support, delivery and outstanding needs after the outreach day.
Working in partnership
Vision care requires different expertise.
Schools and educators
Help identify the school context, coordinate learners, communicate with families and support programme follow-through.
Qualified eye-care professionals
Conduct clinical examinations, make diagnoses, prescribe correction and determine appropriate clinical or low-vision interventions within their professional scope.
Families and caregivers
Remain an essential part of consent, communication, ongoing care and referral follow-through.
Rolled Sleeves coordinates access and programme delivery. Clinical assessment, diagnosis and prescribing remain with appropriately qualified eye-care professionals.
Appropriate care
The answer is not always a pair of glasses.
A learner who has difficulty seeing may need spectacles. Another may require further investigation. Another may benefit from low-vision support or a different intervention altogether.
Rolled Sleeves does not begin with a product.
We begin with the learner's need and work with qualified professionals to determine the appropriate pathway.
Where the work happens
Bring care closer to where learners already are.
Schools are a practical point of connection between learners, educators, families and health professionals.
Working through school communities can help reduce some of the practical barriers that make eye-care access difficult. Rolled Sleeves therefore works with schools rather than simply delivering an event at them.
See how schools can work with us
SCHOOL-COMMUNITY DELIVERY
Measure. Learn. Improve.
Every programme should teach us something.
Rolled Sleeves records programme delivery so that we can understand what support was identified, what reached learners, what remained outstanding and where the model can improve.
We want growth to be based on documented delivery rather than claims of scale.
See our impactBuilding responsibly
A model designed to grow.
Rolled Sleeves is developing a school-community eye-care model that can be strengthened through experience and expanded responsibly over time.
Our ambition is broader access across South Africa.
Our responsibility is to build that reach on evidence, partnerships and reliable delivery.
Work with us
Better access takes more than one organisation.
Schools, eye-care professionals, funders and delivery partners each have a role in helping learners move from an identified need to appropriate support.