A Young Man Who Sold Tissues on the Street, and the Surgery to Save His Sight

He is twenty, and for a long stretch of his life, the work was simply survival.

He had dropped out of school and sold tissue boxes to bring in money, living with his mother and his sister. Their situation was hard enough that the church stepped in to change it. The son and daughter were each given places to live in homes belonging to the diocese, and the mother found work at a nursing home. A family that had been barely holding on was finally given a floor to stand on.

Then his eye began to fail. He suffered a retinal detachment in his left eye, the kind of injury that steals sight permanently if it is not repaired in time. The surgery to save the eye costs about 40,000 EGP.

For most of the families in these stories, the numbers are enormous. This one is smaller, and somehow that makes it sharper. Forty thousand pounds, roughly $800, standing between a twenty-year-old and the vision in his left eye. A young man who already had to grow up too fast should not lose his sight over a sum that, for many donors, is a single generous gift.

The diocese committed 10,000 EGP. Luke's Kids committed to the remaining 30,000 EGP so his eye can be repaired before the damage becomes permanent.