Tzu Chi USA Oakland Service Center’s Charity Gala on August 4, 2024, completes fundraising for the iCare510 vision care initiative that would launch in 2025. Photo/Novita Teng
Written by Ida Eva Zielinska
SHARE
In Oakland, California, a Tzu Chi USA Northwest Region team has much to celebrate, as a vision care program that they launched at the start of 2025 is thriving. The initiative began following a visit to the Oakland Service Center from Steven Voon the year before. While there, Voon, Executive Vice President of Tzu Chi Medical Foundation and Executive Director of Mobile Clinics, shared information about Tzu Chi USA’s mobile vision care programs.
“Wow, vision!” Jennifer Thai, Director of the Oakland Service Center, remembers thinking when she attended Voon’s seminar. It was the first time that the notion of providing vision care had come up for her team. “We do acupuncture, we do dental, and this is something that we’re familiar with, but had never heard of vision. And I said, ‘Oh, this is very interesting, and I think our community may need it.’”
Tzu Chi’s mobile vision care programs in the United States took off in 2013, when Voon launched the first Tzu Chi Vision Mobile Clinic, a state-of-the-art, full-service vehicle that he had designed himself. That Vision Mobile Clinic began operating in the Los Angeles area, where Tzu Chi USA is headquartered. In 2016, a second was added in California, this one serving the Fresno area, where Voon is based and from where he and his team would continue expanding the program.
With its growing experience, the mobile clinic team in Fresno created a Standard Operating Procedure for mobile vision care that could be applied nationwide, and soon, additional Tzu Chi Vision Mobile Clinics joined the fleet. In 2019, two went into service in New York and New Jersey (both are smaller vans that jointly perform the function of a single full-sized vehicle while conforming to parking restrictions in New York City). Then in 2023, another full-sized Vision Mobile Clinic was inaugurated in Las Vegas, Nevada.
However, the path to providing vision care doesn’t require an immediate jump to acquiring a Vision Mobile Clinic. In fact, in both Nevada and New York, the teams began by purchasing portable equipment that could be transported and set up at service sites. “It’s a baby step to going up,” said Voon, recounting how both New York and Las Vegas graduated to a Mobile Clinic about a year after starting vision care with their portable equipment.
Learning all this, Thai was eager to get the ball rolling in Oakland, but first she investigated whether there was a need for vision care in the area, particularly among students. “I reached out to County Health and did some research and got some data. And yes, there is a need for vision care in Oakland.”
Thai then contacted schools that the Oakland team already works with, where the principals echoed her findings. “Teachers complain about students not being able to see the blackboard and their academic level going down,” she said. “The parents just don’t realize that their kid has a vision issue. When you have a toothache or are sick, the parent will know, but with vision care, the kid won’t complain. It’s normal to them that they can’t see so they just adjust to the problem. So parents hardly find out.”
From Goal to Fundraising Success
Bolstered by her research, Jennifer Thai decided to start a fundraising campaign to purchase portable equipment, naming the eye care initiative iCare510 as a nod to Oakland’s 510 area code. “Once we figured out this is what we wanted to do and we had a clear vision, it was, ‘Okay, we’re going to do a gala to raise some money,’” she recounted. The question was: How much?
“I talked a lot to Steven and asked, ‘How much do I need to get just the portable vision care equipment?’ and he said, ‘At least $80,000 to $100,000.’ So we set the goal at $100,000.” With that amount, they could get equipment for two mobile exam rooms. “You can use a small cargo van and move around. Probably in less than one hour, you can set up and be ready to go,” Steven Voon explained.
The Oakland team then went into full gala planning mode at the end of May 2024, foreseeing ten tables, each bringing in $10,000. But when information about their fundraising effort went out, the response was almost overwhelming. “We didn’t realize that there are so many people that are willing to support the care that we were going to provide to kids,” Thai exclaimed. “When we reached out to our partners, some of them sponsored tables, some sponsored tickets, they sent in checks… We ended up going from ten tables to 20 and raised $200,000 within two months! It’s double what we planned for and we were so happy.”
Voon was hardly surprised. “A pair of glasses, the cost is not expensive, but the fundraising power is so great. I kept telling Oakland and all the chapters that want to participate, whenever they tell their donors ‘I want to do vision,’ their donation money will come in so fast, without doing much.” That’s because there’s something tangible attached to their gift, he went on to explain. “If I come to a person and say, ‘Will you donate $100 to give free glasses for kids to read?’ People give you $100. If you say, ‘Will you give me $100 for hot meal distribution?’ they may not because they can’t see their $100 linked to what they can contribute. But their $100, they can link a pair of glasses to a child’s face. That makes a difference.”
Yet the generosity they witnessed was about more than just the appeal of a pair of glasses; it also flowed from a neighborhood that the Tzu Chi USA Oakland Service Center has called home for a long time. “For the last 20 some years, we’ve been in the same location, which is the Little Saigon area in Oakland and where the majority of the population are Vietnamese, coming from Vietnam or Chinese from Vietnam,” Thai said. As Tzu Chi has supported various needs in the community, it was eager to give back.
On August 4, 2024, Tzu Chi Oakland welcomed 200 guests to its Charity Gala at a well-established Bay Area restaurant, where everyone gathered to support the iCare510 program and enjoyed a delicious vegetarian banquet. The evening featured a vegetarian cooking demonstration by celebrity chef Martin Yan, entertainment, an auction, and more. Given the generous support already received even before the event, the night almost felt like a mutual appreciation dinner between Tzu Chi and the community.
“Actually, it was the first time that we had ever done a gala in Oakland so we were able to get the whole community,” Thai shared. This included people from the neighborhood as well as long-term Tzu Chi USA partners such as the American Red Cross and, locally, representatives of the Oakland City Council, Oakland Chinatown Chamber of Commerce, Oakland Vietnamese Chamber of Commerce, and TRYBE, an Oakland community-based non-profit organization.
Several honored guests spoke at the event, sharing sentiments such as, “Tzu Chi’s work is very important to our community. I would like to thank Tzu Chi for helping us,” and “We’ve been looking forward to this event for a long time. We understand the importance of working with different organizations in the community to combine our separate perspectives into a bigger and better force,” and “We have always been Tzu Chi fans, so of course we would come to support Tzu Chi’s activities.” As the evening concluded, it was clear that the funds were in place: Now it was time for action.
Gearing Up to Launch iCare510
The preparations to launch the program were multifaceted, encompassing the purchase of equipment, recruitment of optometrists, training for Oakland Service Center volunteers, and school district approval to officially bring the program to public schools. From the start, Oakland’s vision care initiative has relied on the full support and selfless dedication of the mobile clinic team in Fresno led by Steven Voon and Olivia Chung, Fresno Mobile Clinic Manager. Jennifer Thai is immensely grateful. “They helped us put together the plan, and then they also helped us get the equipment. And then the training: They drove all the way from Fresno many times just to train our volunteers and let us know what the process is.”
The training process began in January 2025 and also involved travel to Fresno by the Oakland Service Center team. “We sent about ten volunteers there two or three times. Not only for training with the equipment, but also we shadowed during [Vision Mobile Clinic] events. They were kind enough to let us join so that we could actually do hands-on training as well – from registration to pretesting and equipment setup, everything.”
“I can’t sit in the office and say, ‘Jennifer, you do step one, two, or three. That’s it. You will be successful.’ I always believe this: To accomplish any chapter being successful, as a leader we need to work with them side by side,” Voon shared. And he and the Fresno team truly walked the talk. “I got full support,” Thai confirmed. “I would say without the support from the Fresno team and Steven and Olivia, it wouldn’t happen. They did a lot of work helping to get us going.”
Part of the support included help with recruiting volunteer optometrists. “Olivia would give me sample emails on how to reach out to optometrists and tell them about our program,” Thai said. “That’s how we ended up recruiting two optometrists.” This kind of support would prove especially valuable going forward, as recruiting volunteer optometrists would turn out to be an ongoing effort.
There was also the aspect of securing permission to bring the program into schools. There too, the Fresno team was invaluable. “With our knowledge of how to negotiate with the school district, what needs to be done to sell them on what we can do… that’s why we were able to get the Oakland Unified School District to allow us to go to all the schools that we need to help through the vision program,” Voon noted.
Within a few weeks, the Oakland Service Center had its portable vision care equipment in place, two optometrists on board, and 14 trained volunteers. The iCare510 team then scheduled its first outreach for mid-February 2025, confident in their readiness. “It was only one and a half months since we started learning the equipment, but then you learn as you go,” said Thai.
From One School to Many
On February 12, 2025, iCare510 conducted its inaugural outreach event at Franklin Elementary School in Oakland. In fact, Oakland Service Center volunteers had already been active within the school for some time, so there was an established relationship that had begun with tutoring.
“We did some research on the schools in this area and found that there might be a need at Franklin Elementary School, which is only a couple of blocks from our Tzu Chi office,” Jennifer Thai recounted. Taking a proactive approach, she reached out to the school to say that the service center could offer tutoring, and the principal agreed. “They are within walking distance, so every Sunday they send over about 30 kids from the school,” she said. The connection grew from there. “A year later, we added character education. Then we started a back-to-school backpack distribution.” And they could now offer vision care.
During the first iCare510 event, the team provided vision screenings to 70 students. Since the Oakland Service Center volunteers already knew the school well, they returned several more times so they could reach every student who needed a screening or an eye exam. From February 12 to August 8, the team provided 201 vision screenings and 48 eye exams, dispensing 25 pairs of prescription glasses to students who needed them.
