The Florida's Vision Quest program began in Orange County Public Schools with little more than a handful of volunteers and a dream. Prior to 1994, most at-risk Florida children born with poor vision were destined for social and academic failure. Since then, Florida's Vision Quest, a nonprofit organization that provides free comprehensive vision exams and state-of-the-art new glasses, has worked to insure that Florida's most vulnerable children can see clearly enough to read.

The program helps teachers & nurses to identify children in need of help, recruits doctors to give free vision exams and provides beautiful, contemporary eyeglasses.

Vision Quest also provides services to numerous other organizations throughout the State. It is because of these great collaborative efforts that Florida’s children say, “Now that we can see, we dream!”.

This year alone, the Florida's Vision Quest program will serve over 14,000 children. For over 70% of these students, grades, behavior and attendance are improving while they marvel at being able to see actual leaves on trees, words on the chalkboard and birds fly.

Vision Quest's contribution to children is best told in the simple words of Meosha, a fifth grade student at Orange Center Elementary School:

"I was a student who got into trouble some kind of way, every single day. I did not understand most of my classwork. I thought it was one thing, but when test time came, I found out it was really another. I was suspended a total of sixty days last year. I am not a bad kid. I was just becoming more and more frustrated because things were never completely clear to me. Since I got my new glasses, I make A's and B's in my schoolwork and I have not been suspended anymore. I was on a 3rd grade reading level and I am now on a fifth grade reading level, and in the highest math group."

Meosha's story is not unusual. An estimated 25% of Florida families live daily in poverty. For a struggling family or a single mother, the price of an eye exam and glasses is often out of the question. Fortunately, for Meosha, the agony of failure is being replaced by the joy of success - making a permanent impact on the outcome of her life.

For Moesha, and thousands of children like her, a simple pair of glasses are the key to her future as she experiences the joy of seeing simple clarity; words on the chalkboard, math problems in her text. Perhaps as Moesha grows older, she will forget the volunteers who first gave her glasses, but she will never forget that magical day the fog lifted and she finally understood she could read.

Florida's Vision Quest has been recognized both locally and nationally for its exceptional programs. In 2000, Nancy Jeppesen received the National "Points of Light" Award from President Bush and the Knights of Columbus for her work with Florida's most vulnerable children.