ORBIS takes flight with The Good Agency for World Sight Day

Every year, the ORBIS Flying Eye Hospital, a state-of-the-art eye hospital with wings, circumnavigates the globe saving the sight of thousands of vulnerable people.  And what better way to showcase that work than letting people become virtual pilots?

This week ORBIS UK, the international charity dedicated to providing quality eye care to transform lives, launched Operation Sight Flight with fundraising and campaigning communication specialists The Good Agency. 

Users  navigate the virtual Flying Eye Hospital along a 300 mile leg of the 500,000 mile target journey, exploring the work of ORBIS as they go.  They can then share their flight with their social networks, recruiting new pilots to the mission.   

Krishani Ranaweera, Head of Communications – UK & EMEA, ORBIS UK commented:

“World Sight Day is a key moment for ORBIS so we were proud to team up with The Good Agency to build an innovative app that enables people to get involved with our work quickly and easily, and see how our unique Flying Eye Hospital  saves sight all over the world.”

Talking about how the project evolved, Charlotte Beckett, Head of Digital, The Good Agency said:

“The work that the ORBIS Flying Eye Hospital does globally gave us a unique opportunity to build an interactive piece of data visualization. All the flight paths are built from the plane’s own data sets, and the content has been developed from the crew’s location reports.  We hope users will have as much fun flying the plane and looking around the map as we did developing it.”

Operation Sight Flight went live on Monday 10th October, timed to celebrate World Sight Day (which this year falls on Thursday 13th October).

It is being promoted by Facebook adverts as well as ORBIS UK’s own social media accounts and has already attracted hundreds of visitors.  

You can take a look around the map and fly the plane at http://www.8in10.org/sight-flight/  

And if you’re sharing it on Twitter, you can use the #flytheplane tag.

Charity | Digital and social media | Engagement | Health