ELSANOR, Ala. — “A picture is worth a thousand words,” the famous saying goes, but to 16 Pre-K students in Kathy Beck’s class at Elsanor Elementary School, a picture could prevent serious eye diseases or disorders if detected early.

Bright and early Wednesday morning, Ann Watford of FocusFirst vision screening in Birmingham set up her camera and told each of the boys and girls to sit still and stare at the light. And with the click of a button, a picture was taken and a four year olds sight could be saved from future problems.

“This is the seventh year we have done this program and it is so valuable to the community and the kids to be able to provide this service to them,” Watford said.

This countywide initiative screened 324 children in 16 Baldwin County Schools on Tuesday and Wednesday and since its inception in 2004, 80,000 children in Alabama have been screened and a preventable problem has been caught in 11 percent of those screened.

According to the web site, FocusFirst is part of Impact Alabama: A Student Service Initiative, a nonprofit organization that “provides a cost-effective direct response to the vision problems of the underprivileged children who live in urban and rural poverty in Alabama. FocusFirst student volunteers travel to communities of need and conduct vision screenings for children six months to five years old using state-of-the-art photo-screening technology.”

Stephen Black, a professor and attorney who founded the organization , also developed a Center for Ethics and Social Responsibility at the University of Alabama and employs 30 full-time staffers who travel all over the state providing this service, the web site said.

More than 2,000 students from 22 colleges, universities and high schools participate in this program and Impact is the state’s first organization dedicated to developing service-learning projects with select universities and colleges throughout the state, according to the web site.

If a problem is detected through the program, follow-up care is provided through Sight Savers of America, a nonprofit organization started in 1997, and coordinates with local eye care professionals to provide needed services for those children who fail the screenings.