My husband and I joined Eyes for Africa about five years ago, and we've been out to Ghana four times now. We'd always intended to do something like this and woke up one day, realised we were in our 60s and it was now or never.

It's been a great experience. Some of the team are a lot younger than us, but we all get on fine and we get such fantastic support from the local area.

Eyes for Africa was set up by an ophthalmologist from Liverpool who went out there mainly to perform cataract operations. His wife, an optician, said she'd like to help - and that's how we got involved.

We help screen those with eye problems and hand out specs to those who need them. We begin collecting glasses about three months before going - we get great sackloads of them from all over Gwynedd and, after sorting and cleaning those we can use, send them out to Ghana ahead of our annual fortnight's visit.

The charity works through the church in Ghana, and we couldn't manage without them. They send out nurses to the out-lying villages to see who need our help, organise translators and accommodation - they're fantastic.

The work is exciting and humbling and really satisfying. The people out there have very little, but they sit in the huge queue, laughing and treating it as a day out. We have a good time in the evenings too, after working flat-out in the humidity all day.

Sometimes a patient can really get to you. Last year, we went to a new town about 20 miles outside the capital and had more people than ever; there were over 300 in the queue at one point.

I was just rushing through the church to help my husband with his patients and I saw a little boy sitting on his own on a pew. When I asked if he had a piece of paper, which you need to get in the queue to see us, he said he didn't and looked really confused.

He said he'd come by himself because he wanted glasses to be able to read. I asked around, and teachers present said; "yes, that's Dennis - he just sits in the back of the class, he can't do anything".

I discovered he was 12, and his mother had thought something was wrong with him so she'd managed to borrow £200 from the bank to pay for scans of his head. They said he needed a shunt to drain off fluid from his brain, which would cost £1,500.

Cynthia, his mother only makes £5 a week selling rice by the side of the road and it will take her two years to pay off the original loan. When his father found out there was something wrong, he left her to cope by herself.

On the last day of our stay, we managed to get hold of the scans and our surgeons realised he had a deep-seated tumour in his brain, putting pressure on the optic nerve and I had to tell his mother that nothing could be done.

But when I returned to the UK I discussed Dennis's situation with the wife of the Archbishop of Ghana, who's an anaesthetist in Liverpool half the year.

She passed the information on to a team at Alder Hey Hospital and they're willing to operate on Dennis for free, though we have to raise the funds to pay for the hospital facilities and his travel costs. We've had fantastic support from local people in Dolgellau.

For more information on Eyes for Africa, call Partridge Opticians on 01341 423773.