News from the Lions Den

Posted on November 5, 2011

We are busy getting ready for our Race Night being held on 19th November at the Eaton Bray Village Hall. Tickets are already on sale and it seems that lots of you are hoping to come along and join us for the evening. It promises to be a great night and we hope to see you there. On the next page you will find a cut out form that you can use to purchase tickets or indeed you can even buy and name your own horses.

Our next event after the race night is being held in Dagnall on Saturday 10th December from 10am til 4pm. We are holding a Christmas, craft and second hand book sale.

Santa has promised to join us for the day and will be in his grotto waiting to meet any of our younger (or young at heart) residents. Entry is free (£5.00 to visit Santa including a gift) and hot and cold refreshments will be available throughout the day.

This will be an ideal opportunity to pick up some gifts, last minute stocking fillers, tasty festive foods or simply treat yourself to something special. Closer to the event we will be publishing a full catalogue of all of our books for sale on our website so keep checking www.ebelions.org.uk for further details. We still have some spaces available for stall holders so if you want pitch, please do get in touch by calling Rachel on 07815 067 556.

Last month we told you about the Lions message in a bottle campaign and how it can make a difference to the lives of everyone. This month, we are covering a subject with both local and global impact. Sight.

Lions International are recognised worldwide for it's service to the blind and visually impaired. The organisation initially became involved through a challenge issued in 1925 by a lady called Helen Keller, an advocate for the blind. She challenged Lions to become the 'knights of the blind in the crusade against darkness'. In 1930, Lions introduced the white cane which we wrote about in an earlier entry and is still widely in use today around the UK and the world.

Working in partnership with other organisations in countries of the developing world, Lions work provides 600,000 professional glaucoma screenings and provides 20,000 corneal transplants each year.

We collect more than 5,000,000 pairs of used eyeglasses each year and distribute these to developing countries. We provide thousands of people each year with free, good quality eye care, glasses, Braille writers, large print tests, white canes and guide dogs.

Campaign SightFirst is Lions most ambitious and most successful initiative ever. Lions operate this program, which is the worlds largest blindness prevention programme, with the aim of establishing long terms solutions for eliminating preventable and reversible blindness. The major causes of blindness come from cataracts, river blindness, trachoma and, especially in developed nations like the United States and the UK, diabetic eye disease and glaucoma.

Thanks to this program, Lions can proudly report that they have restored sight to 4,600,000 people through cataract surgeries. Further serious vision loss was prevented for 20,000,000 people and improved eye care services for hundreds of millions were improved.

Lions have :-

• Awarded £100,000,000 for 698 projects in 80 countries
• Provided 60,000,000 treatments for River blindness
• Built or expanded 207 eye hospitals, clinics and wards
• Upgraded 314 eye centres with new equipment
• Provided management training at 92 facilities
• Trained 83,500 ophthalmologists, ophthalmic nurses, other professional eye care workers and village health workers
• Launched the world's first ever initiative to combat childhood blindness in partnership with the World Health Organisation. Thirty paediatric eye centres will be established as a result of this.

Lions Eye Health Programme (LEHP) is a community based public awareness initiative that encourages the early detection and timely treatment of glaucoma and diabetic eye disease and the appropriate treatment for low vision. The programme is run in collaboration with the International Glaucoma Association (IGA), Diabetes UK, the Irish Glaucoma Association and the Diabetes Federation of Ireland.

Importantly, now everyone with an interest in eye health care can participate in LEHP, not just Lions clubs!

We plan to start collecting eye glasses to continue supporting this work so if any of you have an old pair of glasses that you no longer require, please send them to Rachel at 9 Eaton Park, Eaton Bray.

Lions World Sight Day was launched in 1998 by Lions International. It is a global event that focuses attention on the problem of preventable blindness. The shocking fact is that every five seconds one person in the world goes blind and one child goes blind every minute.

Ordinary people doing amazing things

Source: Focus, November 2011