ICICI Lombard, one of India’s leading private general insurers, announced the 14-year milestone of its flagship CSR programme, Caring Hands, reaffirming the Company’s commitment to improving child eye health in underserved communities. Since its inception in 2011, the initiative has grown into one of India’s most meaningful employee-led health interventions, providing free eye screenings and corrective spectacles to schoolchildren across the country. Over the years, Caring Hands has screened more than 5.5 Lakh children and distributed over 50,000 spectacles, significantly contributing to early detection of refractive errors and preventing avoidable visual impairment.

An estimated 3.4 million schoolchildren in India attend classes each day with uncorrected vision issues, significantly hindering their learning—studies show they learn only about half as much as children with clear or corrected eyesight. For many of these children, a simple pair of spectacles can mean the difference between falling behind and finally seeing the blackboard clearly for the first time. This year’s edition of Caring Hands reached another milestone as employees came together nationwide to screen over 50,000 children across 275+ camps. Through Caring Hands, countless young students—who once struggled to read, write, or even recognise faces from a distance—have experienced life-changing moments of clarity.