Do you wear glasses?

If you do, imagine this: you’re in your first year of high school. One day, somebody pushes you in the hallway and your glasses fly off your face

You spend some time groping around on the ground trying to find them. Eventually, you hold in your hand the shattered remains of what used to be your glasses. You are now officially blind

What do you do now? If you’re lucky, you can just ask your parents to bring you to the eyeglass store after school. Soon you will have a new pair made. But what if you can’t afford that new pair of glasses?

What if you never had the chance to go to the ophthalmologist and be diagnosed as sight-deficient in the first place? Imagine all those years at school never being able to read the board. Think of how difficult school would be not being able to make out the facial expressions of your teachers or classmates.

Consider being laughed at when you weren’t able to follow along with the rest of the class because you were missing one simple thing: a pair of glasses.

Activating youth entrepreneurship

When Yash Gupta was in his first year of high school, he broke his glasses. He had to attend class in blindness while waiting for a new pair to arrive.

When he realized that millions of kids around the world don’t have such easy access to eyewear, he found a way to do something about it. He founded Sight Learning, a non-profit organization which donates used eyeglasses to students worldwide. His goal is to make sure every child has access to quality education, sight-impaired or not.

Turning our accidents into opportunities

Each one of us encounters difficult situations in our day-to-day lives. What makes the difference is how we react in those times of difficulty: do we take the initiative to make something meaningful from the experience? Or do we lose ourselves in our frustration?

The next time something inconvenient happens to you, remember that somewhere out there, there are other people having the same problem. Try to see how you can turn an inconvenience into an opportunity. It doesn’t have to mean founding your own non-profit organization. It could be as small as going out of your way to help just one other person facing the same problem as you.