The mission of the Foundation Fighting Blindness is to fund research that will lead to preventions, treatments, and cures for retinal degenerative diseases including: retinitis pigmentosa, macular degeneration, Usher syndrome, Stargardt disease, and related conditions. These diseases, which affect more than 10 million Americans and millions more throughout the world, often lead to severe vision loss or complete blindness.
The Foundation Fighting Blindness was founded as the National Retinitis Pigmentosa Foundation in 1971 by Gordon and Lulie Gund, Bernard and Beverly Berman, and other dedicated leaders to find cures for retinal degenerations at a time when very little was known about those vision-robbing diseases. Blind from retinitis pigmentosa, Gund is Chairman of the Foundation Fighting Blindness and Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of Gund Investment Corporation. He is a former majority owner of the Cleveland Cavaliers (National Basketball Association) and was co-founder and part owner of the San Jose Sharks (National Hockey League). Berman died in 1996.
Through private individual contributions, corporate philanthropy and community-based fundraising activities, the Foundation has raised more than $450 million since its founding and is the largest non-governmental source of research funds for retinal degenerative diseases.
Read more about Foundation Fighting Blindness: Diseases Studied, Research and Clinical Trials, National Neurovision Research Institute, Grants, Fundraising and Public Education, VisionWalk, Dining in The Dark, Race To Cure Blindness, VISIONS Conference, Vision Seminar Series, Partners For Retinal Health
Famous quotes containing the words foundation, fighting and/or blindness:
“Wonder is the foundation of all philosophy; research, the progress; ignorance, the end. There is, by heavens, a strong and generous kind of ignorance that yields nothing, for honour and courage, to knowledge: an ignorance to conceive which needs no less knowledge than to conceive knowledge.”
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592)
“My grandfather fell on Vinegar Hill,
And fighting was not his trade;
But his rusty pike’s in the cabin still,
With Hessian blood on the blade.””
—Joseph I. C. Clarke (1846–1925)
“... that great blindness which we are all under in respect to our own selves.”
—Molière [Jean Baptiste Poquelin] (1622–1673)