Knights of the Blind
By Glenna Wilson
You have to get new eye glasses. What do you do with the old ones? A good choice is to give them to the local Lions Club.
With 326 of these clubs in Kansas, all participating in sight conservation programs, it should be easy to find a place to take them.
Lions Clubs have had sight conservation as a major service project for many years with a variety of programs. Some years ago, perhaps in the 1920s, Helen Keller challenged the Lions to become Knights of the Blind, explains Jim Tubach, a Lions member in Manhattan, KS.
These projects serve people in many countries as well as in the United States.
To begin with, the eye glasses the Lions collect are counted and sorted. Those with good frames are taken to prisons at Lansing, ElDorado, Hutchinson, or Ellsworth, where the glasses are cleaned, marked with the strength of the lenses, put into bags and boxed sorted by strengths.
They are then given to organizations to take to Third World countries. An optometrist or ophthalmologist goes along to test the local people's eyes and to sort through the glasses to find a pair that will improve the vision of the individual patient. The glasses are free to the new owners, Tubach says.
Another program in which the Lions serve Third World countries is furnishing glasses for the "Feed the Children" organization to distribute.
Lions Clubs work for better sight in their own communities as well. In Kansas a mobile screening unit goes where a local Lions Club has made arrangements for it. The unit screens eyesight, blood pressure, hearing and check for diabetes. Adults receive this service free of charge.
The clubs also contribute to the University of Kansas Ophthalmology Department for purchase of equipment. Clubs are also asked, from time to time, to buy glasses for someone in their community who is financially unable to purchase them. Tubach says that the Manhattan club usually buys several pairs each year for school children.
Since the late '90s, the Lions Clubs in the state have worked with the Kansas Eye Bank. Lions members volunteer to transport eyes or corneas from donors to Kansas City or Hays where they are used for transplants or research, some locally and some throughout the world.
Tubach says anyone who wants to donate eyes or corneas should be sure to tell their family. Then the family tells the funeral director.
The Lions Club is the largest service organization in the world, Tubach says, with clubs in 192 countries.
Human Services & Aging
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