Mark and Teresa Richey help open new eye care center in Ghana

When Mark Richey awakens in the morning in his Newbury, Mass., home, he sees picturesque New England land and seascapes.

When he climbs a mountain in some of the world’s most remote regions, such as Everest in the Himalayas, he sees vistas beyond imagination. He, and world-class mountain climbers like him, also see extreme wealth inequality among the people living in those regions.

It is those human sights that motivate climbers like Mark and Dr. Geoff Tabin to give back worldwide.

Dr. Tabin is an ophthalmologist and the founder of the Himalayan Cataract Project, now called the Cure Blindness Project. A global non-profit based in Vermont, it’s the Project’s goal to cure blindness caused by cataracts in South Asian and Sub-Saharan African low- and middle-income countries where people experience high rates of vision loss and blindness.

Mark and wife Teresa, owners of Mark Richey Woodworking in Newburyport, have joined the cause as both volunteers and donors.

“The vast majority of curable blindness in the world is cataracts because so many people have them but don’t have access to care,” Mark explained. “I’ve known Geoff Tabin almost my whole adult life. This became his life legacy. We wanted to support his work and give back to mountainous regions.”

Mark and Teresa have traveled to Tanzania with Dr. Tabin and his team as it provided cataract surgeries powered by generator in remote regions. And now, their latest contributions have been to a newly opened Eye Care Center of Excellence at Cape Coast Teaching Hospital in Ghana.  

Last year, as United States Agency for International Development (USAID) funding dropped away for the Cure Blindness Project and the new eye hospital mid-construction, Mark Richey Woodworking held a fundraiser for the Cure Blindness Project. The event invited clients, vendors, friends, and other business partners to the architectural woodworking and corporate furniture company’s impressive factory for tours and education on the Cure Blindness Project’s work.

The event raised $250,000, including a $100,000 matching donation from Mark and Teresa. Funds raised went directly to Cure Blindness, including the Ghana hospital project.

Mark also spent a year volunteering as a consultant to the project team, reviewing construction details, material selections, and helping keep the project on budget and on schedule.

“I’m a builder. I’m a woodworker,” said Mark. “These days one of the ways I have found that I can give back is through consulting.”

That consulting included weekly virtual meetings with the project team, which are still ongoing; reviewing documents; and two visits to Ghana – the first in January of 2025 to see the site and then in March 2026 for the opening.

Seeing the results of their giving

The hospital, which is already providing sight restoring cataract surgeries, was celebrated on March 3 and Mark and Teresa were there, center stage with the remarkable Cure Blindness Project team and dignitaries such as Dr. Grace Ayensa-Danquah, Ghana’s deputy minister of health.

The event featured primarily speakers, celebrating a vision realized.

Mark and Teresa were also there in advance of and after the opening. They had traveled to Ghana in West Africa a few days ahead of the celebration so Mark could meet with the construction team and hospital staff to tackle “punch list” items. They stayed after to sightsee, including to an emotion-invoking slave trade museum, monument to the first prime minister, and a safari at a national park.

It is some of these same sights – along with the activities of daily living, working, and care giving – that many more locals will also now be able to see again thanks to this new eye care center’s cataract care.

“A person goes from literally blind to being able to see. It’s just an incredible life changing operation,” said Mark, who remains so moved by the organization’s work that his volunteerism with the hospital continues.

A generator, solar panels, medical equipment, fencing, and landscaping are the next phase of the project for which funds are being raised, Mark shared.

Keep learning

Learn more about the Eye Care Center of Excellence at Cape Coast Teaching Hospital and the Cure Blindness Project: https://cureblindness.org/news/ccth-eye-care-center

Learn more about how Mark and Teresa give back at home and on the world stage, including other major initiatives such as a hospital in Haiti and school in Afghanistan: https://www.markrichey.com/impact/outreach

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