optometrist · founder of VisionSpring · co-founder of EYElliance · author of Dare to Matter
Jordan Kassalow has spent more than two decades building organizations that put eyeglasses on the faces of the people who need them most. He reached out to reweave to help him tell that story without words.
two videos, 6 minutes total, his own wordsvideo one
Jordan opens with the scale of the problem and lands on a single child. Why one girl's experience is the right way to introduce a global mission.
Jordan Kassalow, founder of VisionSpring · 3:13
It removes the fear and turns fear into hope and optimism. And that is very powerful for children.
Jordan Kassalow
video two
Words become barriers when a story crosses borders. Jordan on why a wordless film carries the same emotion in every classroom, every language, every context.
Jordan Kassalow on why wordless · 3:06
who he is
Jordan Kassalow is an eye doctor, social entrepreneur, and author. He is the founder of VisionSpring, an international social enterprise that has generated more than one billion dollars in economic impact for low-income households through the proliferation of affordable eyeglasses. He is the co-founder of EYElliance, a multi-stakeholder coalition driving global strategy to expand access to eyeglasses at scale. He founded the Global Health Policy Program at the Council on Foreign Relations, where he previously served as an Adjunct Senior Fellow. He continues to see patients in Manhattan as a partner at Drs. Farkas, Kassalow, Resnick and Associates.
Before VisionSpring, he served as Director of the River Blindness Division at Helen Keller International. He co-founded Scojo New York and helped pioneer the now widely-adopted model of training local entrepreneurs to provide eye care in their own communities. His book, Dare to Matter: Your Path to Making a Difference Now, is a practical guide to using your career as a vehicle for impact.
Neil Blumenthal, co-founder of Warby Parker, served as Director of VisionSpring for five years before launching the eyewear company in 2010. Jordan brought Neil in as an early advisor to Warby Parker, and VisionSpring became one of its first nonprofit partners. The Warby Parker Pupils Project, which provides eyeglasses and screenings to children in public schools across New York, Baltimore, and other cities, runs through that ongoing partnership today.
Taniya's wordless film, the one Jordan reached out to reweave to make, now travels through both networks: VisionSpring in schools around the world, Warby Parker in Pupils Project classrooms across the United States.
A vision screening is a small moment that can change a child's whole life. But it is also a moment that can be scary, confusing, or skipped. Jordan wanted children to see what was about to happen to them by watching it happen to someone else first. Without narration. Without instructions. In a way that carried across language, across school, across country.
He reached out to reweave to make Taniya's story: a wordless film following a ninth grade dancer in Bawana, India, as she receives her first pair of glasses at a VisionSpring vision camp at her school. The film is now used in classrooms around the world to prepare children for their own screenings. The full case study lives at Taniya and the vision camp.
verbatim, from his reweave interviews.
on the scale of the problem
"Millions, hundreds of millions, 239 million children around the world have blurry vision and need glasses and do not have them."
Jordan Kassalow · reweave interview one
on the mission
"We are not going to stop until every child has the right to sight and has the ability to have clear vision."
Jordan Kassalow · reweave interview one
on why reweave
"We reached out to Better World Ed to help us tell the story so kids could see other kids getting glasses in a way that was exciting, that was fresh, and it was powerful."
Jordan Kassalow · reweave interview one
on fear and hope
"It removes the fear and it turns fear into hope and fear into optimism. And that is very powerful for children."
Jordan Kassalow · reweave interview one
on the universal medium
"We love the fact that the video is wordless because it becomes universal. Vision is universal and it is wordless. It does not need words."
Jordan Kassalow · reweave interview two
on what storytelling is for
"It is about the emotion. It is about the story. It is about the subjects in the story. The reweave videos bring those to life better than a pre-produced video."
Jordan Kassalow · reweave interview two
on authenticity
"One of my favorite parts of the video was how authentic it felt. It felt like it was not staged because it was not, it was not prescripted because it was not."
Jordan Kassalow · reweave interview two
on action over words
"Telling these stories by video, not through words but through images, helps people connect to the emotion of the story and it then leads to action. And only through action can we solve problems that affect hundreds of millions, billions of people."
Jordan Kassalow · reweave interview two
on what clear vision is for
"The value of clear vision to me is human potential. The value of clear vision to me is being able to see a brighter future."
Jordan Kassalow · reweave interview one
the film at the center of this partnership
A ninth grade dancer in Bawana, India. The girl whose wordless story now travels with VisionSpring through schools around the world.
Read the case study →Also: the VisionSpring partnership · Taniya's full people page · how wordless films work
Questions about Jordan, VisionSpring, EYElliance, and reweave.