AN optometrist from Tavistock is planning to help the world to see this October when she travels to Zambia on an international assignment with optical charity Vision Aid Overseas.

Pam Adams, who works at Newsome Opticians in Ivybridge but lives in Tavistock, will spend two weeks sharing her skills in the southern African nation where she will be working as a professional volunteer.

Pam's assignment will be focused on providing life transforming eye examinations and spectacles in the Zambia southern province, close to the city of Livingstone.

Vision Aid Overseas is a UK-based charity dedicated to fighting poverty by transforming access to eye care services in developing countries.

Vision Aid Overseas is now establishing vision centres in each of the ten provinces of Zambia to provide jobs for the young optometry technologists and to ensure that people in rural communities have access to eye care.

Pam's project will be supporting this work in the southern province and the four person team she is a part of will be providing outreach services in rural communities to increase the reach of the vision centre in Livingstone.

Pam, who has travelled on five previous professional volunteering assignments with Vision Aid Overseas in Ethiopia, is taking on additional leadership responsibilities for this assignment by being deputy team leader.

She will leave the UK on October 18 and return on November 2.

Pam said: 'I am really excited about my assignment to Zambia and I am looking forward to working with the team to provide eye examinations and spectacles in the southern province.

'Vision Aid Overseas is a charity that is close to my heart because its work has the ability to completely transform people's lives in almost an instant.

'By providing people with eye examinations and spectacles we enable them to learn and work — giving them the power to fight poverty for themselves and their families. I am very proud to be able to use my skills in this way.'

Around 670-million people in the world are visually impaired simply because they don't have spectacles. Vision Aid Overseas establishes vision centres — places where people can access eye examinations in their local community — provides training to eye care workers and runs a number of different projects to break down the myriad of barriers that prevent poor people from accessing eye examinations and spectacles in eight African countries.

Since 1985, the organisation has worked with professional volunteers, UK-based optometrists and dispensing opticians, who give up their time to work on the charity's international programme.

To find out more about the work of Vision Aid Overseas in Zambia and elsewhere in Africa, or to make a donation to support the charity's work, visit http://www.visionaidoverseas.org">www.visionaidoverseas.org