World Sight Day / Weekend-13th and 15th/16th October 2011
The last two years have seen Lions Clubs all over the Multiple District participate in World Sight Day/ weekendwalks. Some Clubs have been on pub walks and other town or village walks. Many of these have brought local publicity for the Lions Club also in many cases a bringing together of the Lions Club with both local dignitaries and blind or partially persons, all taking part in the walk.
This year Lions Awareness Week is 8th - 16th October and what a good way to end the week with a sight- related day. Whilst World Sight day is Thursday 13th October many Clubs prefer to get more people involved by having an event on Saturday 15th October or Sunday 16th October.
Clubs are free to organise what they like but one enterprising Club (Crofton) last year not only arranged to do a walk with the Mayor of their Borough blindfolded but also involved various parts of the community by firstly taking the Mayor to a local optician for an eye health check. Then it was on to the bank with a number of blind persons, where all the facilities for sight impaired persons were explained to him, such as the use of a template for signing cheques. Then, using a borrowed guide dog for a few minutes, a visit was made to the local library, where the Mayor learned about Braille, large print and audio books. The next stop was to a restaurant to eat a meal, still blindfolded. Finally, there was a visit to a local ‘Talking News', where the Mayor spoke of his experiences and thanks were given to the Lions. Ahead of each venue a large sign was displayed explaining what the Lions Club was doing and how to contact them.
Not all Clubs could include all these activities but participation will certainly make the public more aware of the work that Lions are doing as ‘Knights of the Blind'.
I do hope that your Club will participate in the day or weekend and I will be very interested to receive any photographs or descriptions of what your Club has done, preferably by email, as I will be forwarding them to MDHQ for putting together with the other Districts' photographs.
areness
Assistance with Funding of Sight Related Projects
Chichester Lions Club has a fund that can be called on by any Lions Club in the Multiple District (UK) to assist with a sight related activity. The fund has been built up by selling the gold reclaimed from frames of spectacles collected in the spectacle collections. All the spectacles collected on our annual Spectrek Day arrive at Chichester for initial sorting.
Some examples of how Chichester Club has helped other Clubs in the past are as follows:
Newark Lions Club: donation of £1,000 to the Lions Laser Appeal at Newark Hospital. They needed to raise £25,000.
Derby Lions Club: donation of £500 to their local ‘Talking Books'.
Matlock Derwent Valley Lions Club: donation of £725 to buy new equipment for their local Talking Newspapers.
The contact at Chichester Lions Club is Lion Sue Boucher who you can contact through their website www.chilions.org.uk.
Patrick Hamblin
District 105D Sight Officer.
"I call on Lions to be Knights of the Blind" - Helen Keller (1925)
