Cases of sight onset after extended periods of congenital blindness provide windows into visual development and brain plasticity. Such cases are extremely rare in the developed world. Here, we make the argument that in meeting a public health challenge in the developing world, that of providing treatment to curably blind children, we have the opportunity to have a beneficial impact on science and society simultaneously. A recent initiative, Project Prakash, is motivated by these twin goals. We briefly describe this effort, some of its early results, and also the caveats that need to be kept in mind when interpreting the findings.