A Vision For The Whole Planet

James Chen is the founder of Clearly, a new global initiative to solve the largest unaddressed disability in the world – poor eyesight

Kids always ask each other: “If you could have only one of your senses, which would it be?” For you, vision is obviously the most important – why is that?

I always think of that statement, “In the valley of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.” I think that encapsulates the disadvantages of those who have impairments and reminds me why they need help.

You’re a philanthropist. How does the impact of your actions – and those of people who think the way you do – differ from the effect of political will when working on helping people with poor vision? It seems like a battle of passion versus bureaucracy.

Government and civil servants have a great role to play in making sure that citizens have access to services. The challenge, though, is that governments are risk-averse, and for the most part, that’s a good thing – they’re playing with your taxes, after all.

This was okay when the pace of societal change was slow, as it was in agrarian societies, but now we have all kinds of technology and a much higher pace of change, and that makes governments wary.

With private philanthropists, it’s our own money. A ‘loss’ – in monetary terms – does not affect other people or their careers. That’s why businesspeople are a good fit. They know how to get returns on an investment, even if that’s change and impact, not cash.