Is there a particular story or two that stands out from your visits to these developing countries? Do you keep in touch with anyone?

The most memorable stories from all our trips are the ones that involve eyesight. Being an optometrist, helping the visually impaired and documenting their struggles to increase awareness, is what is important to me. Volunteer work with Seva Canada, both as an optometrist and as a humanitarian photographer, is an amazingly rewarding experience. Through my photography, we raise issues of eye care in developing countries and fund eye surgeries and eye care for the poorest of the poor developing countries. We do keep in touch with all the project managers in the places we visit and people we’ve helped and do go back to the same place again and again to see how the project is doing.

Larry Louie
BY Joanna Wong

One visit that touches me the most is the time that my wife and I visited a blind school for girls in Dhaka, Bangladesh. It was the only school in Dhaka that will board and educate blind girls of all castes and religions and most of the funding comes from local and international donations. We were welcomed with open arms. The den mother there was an acid burn victim — a jealous boyfriend had thrown acid in her face and thus she was scarred and blind for life. What an amazing woman — she overcame her struggles and is now a den mother and teacher for blind girls, educating them on how to survive in a non-handicap society and also helping them have self-respect and pride. In countries such as Bangladesh and India, blind or handicapped children are seen as a punishment for the sins of their parents and thus are often hidden away. While we were there, the children sang a beautiful song just for us to thank us for coming to visit them and brightening their day.

What are your current projects?

This year we have been fundraising for an eye camp in the Humla region in Western Nepal. It is an area that has received very few services because of its inaccessibility and because it was a stronghold for the Maoist rebellion. There are no roads or vehicles in the area and the only airstrip in the area was just tarred last year. The region is very poor and many people there actually go hungry because the soil is not very good for growing.

Our goal is to bring a much-needed eye care camp to the area, and hopefully do this at least on an annual basis until something more permanent and sustainable can be established there. So I will be there documenting the eye camp that we sponsored and also photographing the interesting local tribes with their distinctive culture and traditions. I am also possibly going to Calcutta, India on another project.