An Eye for Aiven

This story originally published with Well Above Average: Students and teachers at Greene Early College do what they love and love what they do.

When you’re 7 years old, the world is still a mystery. As a kid, I had many opportunities to explore and places to see, but that suddenly changed. My eye socket was shattered in a tragic accident. The best doctors in Mexico and America could not save my eye. My eye, as they would say, “had no hope.”

Not only did I lose my eye, but I also lost many of my friends in Mexico. I was bullied and called names such as “One Eye” when I would wear my eye patch or “Three Eye” when I would wear my glasses. This whole situation prompted my family to move to North Carolina.

On the first day of school in Snow Hill, I made friends. None of my new friends knew my past or that I had a prosthetic eye, a glass eye. One of my first friends, Miguel Reyes, didn’t know that I had a prosthetic eye until I was a 9th grader at Greene Early College High School. In fact, the story about my eye was not a subject that I ever talked about until these recent years at Greene Early College. As a result, my family and friends at Greene Early College gave me the confidence to tell my story.

I’ve been getting my prosthetic eye made in Mexico since I first lost it at the age of 7. My family would travel back and forth to Mexico to get my new eye every time I outgrew the old one. This past year, when I was 17, my eye became infected because my prosthetic eye was not fitting properly. I had to remove my old eye and wear an eye patch to school for many months until the infection cleared up.

After several months of treatment for the infection, in September 2014 my family filed an insurance claim for me to get a new prosthetic eye here in North Carolina. The cost of being treated by an eye specialist was covered by insurance, so I was very excited and called my English teacher, Ms. Emily Garris, to tell her the great news.

A few weeks later, we learned that the cost of actually fitting the new prosthetic eye would not be covered by insurance. A glass eye was considered “cosmetic,” because it would not restore my vision. My hopefulness turned into hopelessness.

At about this time, Ms. Garris introduced “The Genius Hour Project” to our 11th grade English class. It was based on a practice at Google, where employees were encouraged to spend 20 percent of the work week focusing on something they were passionate about. Ms. Garris challenged our class to spend 20 percent of our time each week on something we were passionate about, but the project had to make an impact on our school, our community, or the world.

A group of my classmates decided to start a campaign to raise money to help me fund my new eye. They called it “An Eye for Aiven.” (My name is pronounced “EYE-ven.”) At Greene Early College we take community service very seriously, so I’ve always been adamant about giving back to the community. But I had no idea how much my peers, my teachers and the community cared about me. They opened an account, raised awareness and money, and we could afford my new eye. This greatly touched my heart. I shed more than a few tears.

I can’t thank enough everyone who donated and spread the word about my cause and kept me in their prayers. My friends and classmates — Abraham Aguilar, Javier Avila, D.J. Cobb, Antonio Herrera, Jesus Morales and Miguel Reyes — took a small idea and made it have a lifelong impact.