What happened?
Posted by B. J. Harris
on Feb 02, 2016
Hopefully Rotarian Ralph Antolino will join us Wednesday with an update on the Friends. If he doesn't make it, we will convince him to come later in the month and give us a "Good Investing Practices" talk!
Lion Bruce Schoonover joined us with a wonderful presentation from the Lions' Club--the Knights of the Blind.
The Lions organization, which is much like Rotary, has focused much of its service effort on vision initiatives. There are 1,350,000 members, and the organization is made up of local clubs, larger districts, and international leadership. They developed the first braille magazine for kids and Helen Keller was a spokesperson for many years. The Lions developed the white cane (with the red tip) and many laws relating to it, around the world. They have been instrumental in guide dog programs as well.
Bruce showed us a very moving video on the history of the group and its many successes.
His own club is providing mass screening of young children for vision disorders. They use a camera/computer-type apparatus that, in two seconds, can photograph the eyes, interpret the data and then send a report to a wireless printer on any abnormalities which exist. Many early learning disorders are vision based, and not diagnosed as such.
We think this might be a wonderful project for our club, and will look into the cost associated and how many children we can help. We all know that the children are our future, and we want to do whatever we can to help them along their way.
One of Helen Keller's quotes rang true: "Ultimately, we are the beneficiaries of our efforts."