This is Melanie, she is from the Philippines. She immigrated to the USA in 2003 in hopes of working hard and saving money to one day afford treatment for her blindness. Melanie was born with a form of macular degeneration called Stargardt disease, or fundus flavimaculatus, is an inherited form of juvenile macular degeneration that causes progressive vision loss usually to the point of legal blindness. The progression usually starts between the ages of six and twelve years old and plateaus shortly after rapid reduction in visual acuity. Several genes are associated with the disorder. Symptoms typically develop by twenty years of age, and include wavy vision, blind spots, blurriness, impaired color vision, and difficulty adapting to dim lighting.

Melanie has the most common form of this mutation. She has plateaued at 20/450 vision. Although there is no official cure for Stargardt, there is advancement in Europe using Stem Cells.

If Melanie could regain a franction of her sight lost, it would help her incredibly in her day to day life.

She donates her days (unpaid) to managing the financials of an open source community based tech-lab and social gaming lounge. Imagine viewing spreadsheets at 200pt font. I have never been more inspired by seeing Melanie adapt and overcome her challenges instead of using her disability to her advantage.

Lets rewind to November of last year. We hired a VP of Operations who essentially bankrupted the company in hopes of acquiring control. This effort partially failed, but not without great sacrifice from everyone here.

The money she had reserved for her stem cell treatment was given to the lab as a gift when their VP bankrupted the company. Her gift was used to cover the standing debt and restructure. We refused to file bankruptcy. She literally gave her eyesight to make sure this collective dream was not squashed.

We all owe her so much gratitude for selflessly giving all she had so we can explore and learn.

This is why we have come together and present our wish to you, the gracious donor.

She has no idea we are doing this for her, in fact she may not like it. She has given this gift, can we give her a little hope to see just a little bit more clearly.