Liverpool FC will wear special charity shirts when they play West Bromwich Albion at Anfield in the Barclays Premier League tonight.
The team will sport the ‘Seeing is believing’ logo to show their support for Standard Chartered’s global charitable initiative aimed at tackling avoidable blindness in developing countries.
There are also activities planned for half-time to highlight the importance of preventing blindness.
The Standard Chartered Bank and the International Agency for Prevention of Blindness is a collaboration that launched in 2003. Since then they have reached over 31 million people and around 39 million people in the world suffer from blindness. This is projected to rise to around 76 million by 2015.
However, eight in ten cases of blindness can be prevented or treated so together with the World Health Organistation, Standard Charter launched ‘Vision – The Right to Sight’; a global campaign to eliminate avoidable blindness by 2020.
Every five seconds, someone in the world goes blind and every minute, one more child goes blind, while around 90% of blind children do not attend school.
This will be the second time that Liverpool has sported the ‘Seeing is Believing’ logo, the last time being at a home game against Chelsea last season, which raised £86,700 for the cause.
The shirts are limited edition and will be signed after the match to later be auctioned off. Every pound will be matched by Standard Chartered, which organisers say is the ‘perfect match’ by bringing the club and its sponsor together.
After tonight’s game, fans will be able to bid for the shirts at www.ebay.co.uk/perfectmatch