Your donation will help us produce journalism like this. Please give today.

San Diego Chargers football star Dwight Freeney was at Baldwin Hills Elementary on Tuesday, not to teach students how to cream quarterbacks, but to celebrate Vision To Learn, a local non-profit that has provided 10,000 low-income students across Los Angeles with free vision care.

Freeney was joined by Vision To Learn founder, Austin Beutner, and Los Angeles City Councilman Herb Wesson, along with dozens of students who have received free eyeglasses from the organization, their parents and teachers.

“We know 80 percent of learning is visual, yet nearly one quarter million young children across California do not have the eyeglasses they need to read their books or the board,” Beutner said in a press release. “We want to give these children a chance to succeed by providing the most fundamental of tools – vision to learn.”

According to Vision to Learn, one in every seven kindergarten through fifth graders in California isn’t equipped with the glasses they need to succeed – that’s 55,000 students here in Los Angeles who are struggling in the classroom due to untreated vision problems.