When World Sight Day Got Cancelled, We Found Another Way to Love Your Eyes

On September 30th, 2025, the U.S. government shut down after Congress failed to pass a federal funding bill before the fiscal year ended. Large parts of the government closed. Within hours, every World Sight Day event Prevent Blindness had planned on Capitol Hill was gone. A congressional briefing, a vision screening, and a full day of meetings with congressional offices – all cancelled. Months of planning, undone by a budget standoff we had no control over.

When we called our screening partner to break the news, they were already thinking ahead and hoped we would find a way to reschedule. The question quickly became: if World Sight Day was no longer available, what other moment could encourage policymakers to show they care about eye health? And then someone on the call joked: “Maybe we could do it in February instead, for Valentine’s Day.”

It was an offhand comment, but it stuck, and it went on to become the most creative advocacy campaign we had run in years.

Turning a Joke Into a Campaign

In the United States, Valentine’s Day is celebrated on February 14th with cards, candy, flowers, and other small tokens of affection. While Valentine’s Day is widely celebrated beyond the United States, many countries observe their own version of a day dedicated to love, even though the date, meaning, and traditions may differ. In some it is romantic, in others it centers on friends or family, and in some it falls in June or July rather than February. What holds across them all is care. Protecting someone’s vision is a meaningful act of care.

So we built a Love Your Eyes campaign around that notion, inviting advocates to send a Valentine to their Member of Congress.

Advocates submitted their messages through our advocacy platform. A required open-text field captured a personal note about what vision and eye health mean to them, along with a fuller policy message that went to their representative’s office. Because the platform matched each advocate to their representative, we could feature every note on the correct office’s Valentine, without mapping districts by hand.

We then created a personalized Valentine for every House office with an active representative. Each one carried Love Your Eyes branding, an advocate’s own words, and specific policy requests. Where a direct constituent message existed, we used it. Where a state had engagement but no direct message to a particular office, we signed the Valentine from an advocate in that state. And where no messages came from a member’s state, we used one of the strongest messages and signed it more generally from a Prevent Blindness community member.

This allowed us to meet one of our important aims – every office received something personal and thoughtful, even where direct participation was limited.

We hand-delivered the Valentines the day before an in-person vision screening event on Capitol Hill, connecting the written message with a chance to engage face to face. Two members of Congress who champion children’s vision legislation attended the screening, and one delivered remarks.

Why It Worked

The campaign resonated because it combined familiar elements in a way that felt both personal and actionable: an increasingly recognized global platform in Love Your Eyes; a culturally familiar occasion in Valentine’s Day; real advocate voices instead of templates; and a specific, actionable ask that gave the emotion somewhere to go.

It also worked because we gave advocates room to be more than a click. Sending a pre-written message matters, but people want to feel like they are part of something and that their own words count. The open-text field turned a routine action into a personal one. Advocates were not just clicking send. They were telling us what their eyes, and their families’ eyes, meant to them, and we carried those words straight to the people who make policy.

Love Your Eyes, Year Round

Here is what the whole experience taught us: Love Your Eyes is bigger than World Sight Day.

For those of us whose Octobers are complicated, this matters. A Washington, DC World Sight Day event has always been a staple for Prevent Blindness, and we are about to lose it two years running. Last year it was the shutdown. This year Congress will be in recess ahead of the midterm election. If Love Your Eyes only lived in October, we would have lost that ground. Instead, we found another moment and discovered that the campaign can be successful outside of World Sight Day.

That flexibility is the real lesson, and it is why this model travels. Valentine’s Day worked for us in the United States, but the specific holiday is not the point. The point is taking the parts of the campaign that work in your context and running with them.

Collect messages from advocates and patients in your community. Match them to the decision-makers who can act. Substitute your own local eye health priorities. Deliver them in whatever way fits your setting, whether that is to a parliament, a health ministry, a mayor’s office, or whoever you most need to reach. Choose a moment on your calendar that carries meaning where you are.

Love Your Eyes gives you a platform originally designed for World Sight Day. But its greatest strength is that it can be adapted to your own community, your own priorities, and your own moments that matter. The next moment to love your eyes is the one you choose.