by Eva Dameron
Daily Lobo
Almost a century ago, Helen Keller urged the Lions Club International to crusade against blindness and vision impairment.
"She challenged them to become knights for the blind," said Curt Vavra, member of the Albuquerque Breakfast Lions Club. "It really pushed them to look at vision-related projects as something to do."
UNM's Staff Council and the Lions Club have placed a box in the main lobby of the UNM Student Health Center for people to donate their old prescription glasses. The organizations plan to send the glasses to developing countries.
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Karin Retskin, a member of UNM Staff Council, said she hopes to get more drop-off sites in the near future.
"Since we have started the program, the SUB, the Zimmerman Library, the law library, Continuing Education and the Health Sciences Library have offered to host drop-off sites," she said.
The box has been in place since Thursday, Retskin said, but she does not know how many pairs have been donated so far.
In the summer of 2004, UNM's Staff Council and Lions Club collected eyeglasses on campus to donate to those who cannot afford eye care.
The two organizations joined forces again this summer, Retskin said. She said the event lasted six days.
"One of our events was a book giveaway, and in conjunction we collected used eyeglasses," she said. "We collected over 500 pairs."
The glasses are shipped to a clearinghouse in Midland, Texas, she said, where they are measured for prescription strength, cleaned up, categorized and sent to developing countries.
"They'll send several boxes of them - maybe three or four hundred - with an ophthalmologist or optometrist to a Third World country," Retskin said.
Vavra said the ophthalmologist examines people in a town and then matches them with a pair of glasses that comes close to their prescription. If a prescription is slightly off, it can be harmful to their eyes. He said that mostly applies to children whose brains are still developing.
"To adults, it just gives them a headache," Vavra said. "It's a way they can get fairly clear vision. They have no access to any other sort of health care."
He said they're mainly sent to South America and Mexico.
Retskin said they hope to keep this program running for a long time.
"We are looking for this to be a permanent year-round initiative," she said.
