For over 25 years, ORBIS has been striving to eliminate avoidable blindness in the developing world where 90% of the world’s blind live. With the help of hundreds of dedicated volunteer doctors, nurses and pilots, each year ORBIS steadily moves closer to achieving its vision of a world where no one is needlessly blind.
ORBIS volunteer pilots play an important role in delivering sight worldwide as they make it possible for ORBIS to relocate the Flying Eye Hospital—the world’s only airborne ophthalmic training facility—to airports throughout the developing world.
One such volunteer is Jim Bevier. A retired FedEx pilot based in Memphis, Tennessee, USA, Jim has helped train volunteer ORBIS pilots since 2001 and began flying the ORBIS DC-10 in 2004. He has piloted the Flying Eye Hospital to more than 20 programs around the world—from the Philippines to Peru.
Jim’s sincere dedication to help ORBIS carry out its mission has earned him a feature in the January 2009 issue of Reader’s Digest magazine. Read more about Jim, one of ORBIS’s many stellar volunteers, here.
Jim Bevier at the first Flying Eye Hospital program in Vietnam
