Vitamin Angels Raises $1.5 Million for Operation 20/20

BALTIMORE—The Celebration of Angels event held in early October at Expo East here raised $1.5 million in cash and product donations to primarily support the first three years of Vitamin Angels’ Operation 20/20 program, a global initiative to eradicate childhood blindness resulting from vitamin A deficiency by the year 2020. Vitamin Angels (www.vitaminangels.org) now has 50 percent of the necessary funding to meet its 2007 goal of providing 4.5 million children in 26 countries worldwide with necessary vitamin A supplements.

“Operation 20/20 will provide children around the world with the basic nutrients they need to keep their vision intact and have a better chance to live a healthy, productive life,” said Howard Schiffer, founder and president of Vitamin Angels. “The natural products industry understands the enormous impact vital nutrition can have on a child’s life and resoundingly supported this effort.”

Corporate donors to Operation 20/20 include Airborne, Allen Greene, Andrew Lessman/Procap Laboratories, Cantox, DSM, Econet/Univera Life Science, END Merck, Hidden Villa, Kang Nian Zhu, LPNY Ltd., Marine Nutriceutical, Natrol, Natural Factors, Nature’s Way, NPIcenter, NTI Corp., Ocean Nutrition Canada, Paragon Labs, Pharmachem Laboratories, Pure Fruit Technologies, Purity Products, Red Roxx, Skyline, Solar Nutrition, Source Salba, Tishcon, SPINS, Vitamer, Vitaquest and Wild Oats. An additional 45 individual donors also contributed to the project coffers.