A Westfield couple recently returned from a 10-day trip to Africa to provide eye care for children at risk of being enslaved.
Dr. Kennedy Neukam and Dr. Tyler Penny are optometrists who practice in Hamilton County. Neukam specializes in pediatric optometry at Little Eyes Pediatric Eye Care in Carmel and Fishers, while Penny practices at VisionWorks in Carmel. The couple embarked on a medical mission March 21-31 in Ghana.
Neukam met Christy Farhar, CEO and founder of the Micah 6:8 Project, during a church retreat in 2024. The Indiana-based nonprofit supports a vocational training center and primary school in Yeji, a rural and poverty-stricken area on Lake Volta known as a slave hub in central Ghana. The organization teaches trade skills to reduce the risk of child trafficking and help end child slavery. While speaking to Farhar, Neukam realized she and Penny could offer medical assistance to the children by way of eye exams.
“They do a medical mission every March, but they’ve never had anyone from optometry or ophthalmology go,” Neukam said. “While we were there, we saw around 400 children at the school.”
The trip — which included members of the organization and nurse practitioners — took several days. The group flew to Accra, the capital of Ghana on the Gulf of Guinea. From there it was a 14-hour bus ride north to Yeji, with occasional detours when the roads were too damaged for the bus.
Neukam said the Micah 6:8 Project provides an education for children who otherwise might be forced into slavery.
“They can go to school all day. They get meals. They get health care and they get vitamins, supplements, water, all things that they didn’t have access to before,” she said. “We collected about four suitcases full of glasses that people in the community had donated to us. When we got there, we took a little bit of effort to kind of set things up — there’s not electricity all of the time and there’s not water all the time, so everything is a little slower.”
Teachers from the school flagged children with vision problems to be seen first.
“We checked their muscle tracking and checked their visual acuity,” Neukam said. “There’s a way to check prescription by just measuring it — I measure the length and shape of their eye. We didn’t have very sophisticated equipment. I just had a bunch of loose lenses that I was able to take on the flight.”
Neukam and Penny also dilated some of the children who had scars in their eyes from trauma or viruses. They were able to provide children who needed corrective lenses with glasses and medicated eye drops for those with infections.
Neukam said although rural areas of Ghana can be dangerous, she felt safe with their group, which was led by a Ghanan native. And, she said, it was worth it to help the children.
“They are full of joy even though they have nothing,” she said. “They don’t know me, they’ve never met me but they let me put an eye drop in their eye. They’re just like ‘Okay I trust you and I need help from you.’ I would say something they wouldn’t understand so they just smile and say ‘yes’ or do a dance or sing or skip. Some of them walk over an hour in the morning just to go to school. They’re just so happy and they really wanted glasses — they were very excited to get glasses. It’s really cool, putting glasses on a kiddo who has probably gone their whole life and just not even realized it. It was really probably the most heartwarming thing just to know, there’s so many tough things in their lives and this will make one thing easier.”
Neukam said they would return if given the opportunity.
“It was 110 (degrees) and we had no fan because we had no electricity. Most of the time it’s stagnant. I had scabies. But just to see them happy and eager to come get their eyes checked, just to feel like you’re actually doing something with the skills that you have, I think it was totally worth it,” she said.
Learn more about the Micah 6:9 Project at micah68project.com.