Students in rural Yunnan giggle as they pose for a photo while donning clunky, orange phoropters used to perform eye exams. [Photo provided to China Daily]

[InKunming--Yunnan] Andrew Shirman had just graduated from Boston College with a degree in Philosophy in 2010 when he set his eyes on China.

Years earlier, while in High school, Shirman had developed a curiosity with the country after visiting Beijing's Great Wall, Xi'an's Terracotta Army and the high-rise metropolis of Shanghai on a cultural trip.

After happening upon an opportunity to teach in the country with the then-relatively-new Teach For China (TFC) fellowship – which was established in 2008 and encourages its fellows to immerse themselves in local life - he soon found himself boarding an aircraft with a one way ticket to the southwestern province of Yunnan.

Little did he know that, six years later, he would be sat in an office in Beijing as an advisory board member of the United Nations Development Programme in China and a Global Shaper of the World Economic Forum, heading up a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing low income students with the eyeglasses they need to succeed in school.

TFC placed Shirman in a middle school in rural Yunnan, and it was there that he met Li Zhongliang - the boy partly responsible for bringing out Shirman's inner philanthropist.

Despite his poor vision, Li had excelled at primary school and continued to impress with top grades at the start of middle school. As work intensified, Shirman, who was, by then, his English language teacher, noticed Li squinting harder by the day. It was clear he couldn't see clearly.

Shirman sat Li, whose enthusiasm seemed to be draining at an alarming rate, at the front of the class. It was a temporary remedy to a permanent problem, however, and by the end of the year, Li was nowhere to be seen on the school's premises.

"It made an impact on me," said Shirman, in an interview with City Weekend. "I think that one simple thing could have stopped him from dropping out of school."

Andrew Shirman, founder of the nonprofit organization Education In Sight, smiles for the camera with a middle school class in Yunnan province. [Photo provided to China Daily]

Li's school disappearance acted as a catalyst for Shirman to set up Education in Sight (EIS) in the spring of 2012. EIS's twofold mission is to correct students' eyesight in underdeveloped communities by providing free vision screenings and eyeglasses, and educate to ensure long term benefit.

The Beijing-based nonprofit has, since 2012, screened over 116,000 students and delivered more than 16,700 free pairs of eyeglasses, according to its website.

With financial donations from friends, associates and fellow TFC alum, Shirman set out to seek the guidance of optometrists in the nearest city to his school in Yunnan. With the help of Dr. Peng, who agreed to offer his expertise for the cost of transportation, the pair began offering eye exams to students class by class.

Two weeks after the initial eye examinations, EIS provided its first shipment of glasses. Astonishingly, 20 percent of students in Shirman's class alone had been in dire need of prescription lenses.

"The change is immediate in what the performance looks like in these kids," said Shirman, speaking to City Weekend. "If you give them glasses, their grades skyrocket."

The result was the same in the classrooms of other TFC teachers, like Sam Waldo, who teamed up with Shirman to work as EIS's Chief Development Officer. Of Waldo's 50-some students, 14 received glasses through EIS.

Waldo noticed the change in his students immediately, especially one in particular. "I could see the wheels turning in his head, but it just wasn't showing up in his test scores," said Waldo in an interview with City Weekend. "Imagine you're trying to learn English and you're in a haze, in a fog, and then it just clears."

Gifting the children eyeglasses solved only part of the problem, however. Many of them were blissfully unaware of their desperate need for a prescription, while others were reluctant to ask their impoverished parents for glasses. When the team checked into the schools a year later, they discovered that many students had stopped wearing their glasses.

Mantra CEO Sam Waldo promotes the latest line of sunglasses and the “Buy One, Give One” purchase model, in Beijing. [Photo provided to China Daily]

Some had misplaced their frames, others felt that their prescription was uncomfortable and a few had ceased wearing them because their parents had told them to, preferring them instead to massage their eyes and stare at green objects to "cure" their nearsightedness.

"We realized education needed to be a much bigger part of our organization," said Shirman, speaking to City Weekend.

That year, EIS reached out to Shirman's growing network of TFC teachers and recruited them as "sight leaders" to educate students about myopia and create a positive culture around glasses.

As the scope of their operations increased and more donations began flooding in, Shirman - who had since moved back to Boston after a two year stint teaching in Yunnan - and Waldo were able to start running EIS full time. Their first task: to navigate their way through the legal red tape and paperwork necessary to allow their nonprofit to become a legitimate charitable organization.

With the necessary documentation and approvals in place, the team managed to secure a partnership with influential nonprofit China Children Teenager's Foundation (CCTF). This allowed EIS to raise funds via the electronic wallets of millions of Chinese on WeChat.

Their first WeChat-oriented fundraiser in 2015 generated almost 100,000 yuan in just a month. The sum was far more than previous fundraising efforts had mustered, since they had been heavily reliant on the personal networks of EIS staff members in the US.

But EIS needed to raise much more money to achieve its lofty, but by no means unattainable goal of providing 35,000 screenings and 7,000 pairs of glasses by the end of the 2015 school year.

After suffering a setback when a Chengdu company pulled out of a donation pledge, Shirman and Waldo decided it was time to make EIS more sustainable. EIS's profit-making arm of the organization, Mantra - a line of fashionable Yunnan-themed glasses and sunglasses made with "all American materials" – was born.

The social enterprise's motto encourages people to "Look Good, Do Good," and promises that for every pair of glasses bought, it will donate one prescription pair to children in need through EIS. Mantra is similarly modeled to TOMS shoes, which adopts a "Buy One, Give One" business model.

"Our ‘Buy One, Give One' concept is simple: for every pair of sunglasses we sell, we donate a pair of prescription glasses to a student in need in rural Yunnan," said Waldo.

Each pair of eyewear ordered from Mantra comes with a unique QR code inside the case, which can be used to track donations to EIS. Customers are able to see exactly where their donation money goes through a backstage research website linked with Mantra's WeChat account.

"100% of the money that goes to EIS from Mantra is directly used to get glasses for needy students," said Shirman. "We tell our customers where their money went and how it was spent, and what students received glasses and when."

Mantra has so far sold thousands of glasses, with as many bespoke prescription pairs being donated in the surrounding areas of Lincang, Baoshan and Shangri-La in Yunnan province.

"We're also creating this together with our local designers, bringing unique local colors, patterns and art to the fore of our design," said Waldo.

Mantra draws its inspiration for its sunglasses from the colorful cultural characteristics found in Yunnan province, such as their "Yi-Lectric" range (pictured above), which uses patterns and colors found in the hand stitching works of the Yi ethnic group. [Photo provided to China Daily]

As the inspiration of the initiative came from Yunnan, Mantra has teamed up with local designers to release new lines of glasses with Yunnan characteristics.

Customers can choose from 25 different styles, including those themed on the hand embroideries of the Dai and Yi ethnic minorities, and Yunnan landscapes, with featured glasses inspired by Dali Old Town, Er-Hai Dusk and Kawagebo sunrise.

"(Yunnan) is where Andrew and I first started working on EIS, where we really got to understand life in China," said Waldo in an interview with Beijing-based expat website JingJobs. "We agree that Yunnan is the most gorgeous and wonderful place, full of natural beauty, bright colors, and unique patterns, such as ethnic minority fabrics."

Mantra's products, priced between 360 yuan ($52) and 580 yuan, offer an abandonment of the "Made in China" status quo. Instead, they are proudly designed and manufactured in China with materials from the US.

The majority of people who buy the glasses are females aged between 25 and 35, according to Waldo. "(Females) have stronger public benefit awareness and show more interest in the story behind the products," he said.

The success and growing popularity of Mantra has helped EIS to expand its operations beyond the reach of TFC-affiliated schools in Yunnan province. The organization now works with public health departments and hospitals in different parts of the country. In fact, EIS programs have rolled out in every school in Shangri-La county of Yunnan province, thanks to cooperation with the local government there.

"That's 21 schools and 17,000 students getting professional medical screenings, vision education and, when necessary, free professional eyewear," Shirman told JingJobs. "Think about that for a moment – that means if you travel to Shangri-La and see a young child with glasses, odds are that those glasses were provided by our program. I have to admit, that makes me proud."