Article from 2021/2022 Impact of Giving Annual Report

Specsavers started with one goal in mind: to make a real difference by making high quality eye and hearing care accessible to everyone. This drive to change lives through better sight and hearing is echoed in their support of the RCH.

“Specsavers has always been a purpose driven company,” said Cathy Rennie Matos, Head of Public Relations at Specsavers ANZ.

“We challenge ourselves to make better sense of the role we play not only in the lives of our patients and customers, but also the people we work with, the communities we operate in and the planet we share.”

The Specsavers model sees locally owned stores operating with a local focus.

“A big part of who we are as a company lies in the communities we serve. Our unique partnership structure means that every Specsavers store is locally owned and operated and our store teams have always done an amazing job in serving their local communities,” Cathy added.

Just shy of 10 years ago, the Specsavers Community Program was launched as a way to provide stores with a mechanism to give back to their local community.
While Specsavers has a national charity partner in The Fred Hollows Foundation that all stores support, this new program enabled individual stores to choose a local charity partner to support as well.

“We had a number of stores in Melbourne who wanted their giving to be as impactful as possible and
therefore they came together and chose to support the RCH Foundation,” said Cathy.
This passion from individual stores saw a total of 23 stores support the hospital. Since 2013, they have donated over $240,000 to the RCH Foundation.

This support has helped fund a number of different initiatives including the Tobii Eye Gaze Device, which gives young non-verbal patients and those with movement disorders the chance
to communicate with voice output by using their eyes.

“The RCH Foundation is a great charity that makes such a difference to the lives of children in Victoria,” said Cathy.

“The team are fantastic to work with – over the years they have worked with us to identify applicable programs or initiatives for our donations to go towards which were aligned with our business purpose.”

“They have also helped us organise events for our store partners to visit the hospital, see the impact of their giving and find out more about what the RCH Foundation does, which is really important for ongoing engagement,” she added.