Humanitarian service organizations like Lions Clubs International serve communities around the world. They do their best, but can they do better yet? This is a story about how Denver Lions Club plans to sustain its impact.
The Denver Lions Club (DLC) through its International Eyesight Missions Committee conducts vision screening campaigns in Denver and around the world. Between 2007 and 2019 it’s worked in the countries of Rwanda, Ecuador, Nepal, Senegal, Mongolia, Mexico and Ethiopia to assess refractive error and dispense used eyeglasses. It’s now engaged in a project to make its efforts sustainable in Mongolia.
Let’s consider what DLC is doing there. In 2017 and again in 2018, volunteers from the Club conducted screening campaigns in Mongolia. They evaluated refractive errors in three ways:
• Gathering important subjective information about patients’ vision issues, e.g., problems with reading, itching, etc.;
• Testing acuity using eye charts;
• Assessing distance vision using portable auto-refractors.
Patients then would visit an accompanying optometrist, who refined the evaluation and prescribed corrective lenses. Finally, volunteers selected appropriate eyeglasses from among the thousands they transported with them to Mongolia. The glasses came from Colorado Recycle for Sight which were collected by Colorado Lions Clubs. Each campaign saw about 1,000 people during the 6 days it operated.
The impact was dramatic, but it was limited by logistics. The volunteers could nott stay and continue their work. They could only leave the remaining recyled eyeglasses that they had transported, but they had no means for dispensing them judiciously while gone.
That is where DLC got creative, devising an approach to make its efforts last. It purchased a functional yet inexpensive auto-refractor, phoropter and lensometer and arranged to visit Mongolia once again in 2019 to deliver the equipment. They donated this equipment and a shipment of used eyeglasses to a group of civic-minded Mongolians who have demonstrated their willingness to see patients regularly.
This same group now comprises a new Gegee Lions Club that has two optometrists’ of its 22 members. DLC has trained the Gegee Lions Club members how best to fit patients with the eyeglasses in inventory. Later, once the pandemic has eased, DLC will ship another, large load of eyeglasses to serve as inventory for the ongoing work. DLC has arranged for additional optometric equipment - a tonometer and a higher-end autorefractor - to be shipped Gegee Club.
The Ulaanbaatar Gegee Lions Club has great future prospects, and its impact will be sustainable for years to come!