For over 50 years the Oxnard Noontimers Lions Club has been working to prevent blindness as well as sustaining other charities in Oxnard and Ventura County. We regularly contribute to:
After being challenged by Helen Keller at the 1925 convention to become "Knights of the Blind" Lions International has focused on sight and hearing issues. Naturally, we work in other areas, but sight and hearing is our number one priority. Our club contributes to:
One of our members, Lion Barry Braff, is an Optometrist here in Oxnard, who provides vision examinations and glasses to students from our local schools who cannot afford vision care. The payments are on the basis of ability to pay with the club picking up the tab for the remainder.
On October 21, 2007 the Noontimers will participate in a health faire at Our Lady of Guadalupe Church in Oxnard. We have rented two SightMobiles and will provide vision screening for all. We will also be picking up used glasses for recycling. Our Lions District is setting up a glasses recycling center at Avenal State Prison where convicts will clean, repair, check refraction, label prescriptions and pack glasses for distribution to other nations (legal restrictions prevent reusing glasses within the US). Our club has twinned with the Padukka Lions in Sri Lanka and we will be sending recycled glasses to them for distribution.
In October 2007 the Noontimers provided a stair-lift to a 13 year old boy with Duchenne's Muscular Disease. His mother had quit work and moved in with her parents to take care of the boy, but the parents lived on the second floor and the mother had to carry the boy up and down stairs to go to school (or anywhere else). When the boy reached 130 pounds, this had become a dangerous chore. The Noontimers paid all the expenses to install a chair-lift so the boy could ride up and down. Mother and child are ecstatic and the Noontimers feel pretty good, too.
Campaign Sight-First was established in 1989 and spent $143 million for 896 projects in 90 countries. It cured or prevented blindness in 27 million people. We provided 80 million treatments for river blindness, restored sight to 7.3 million cataract victims, built or expanded 300 eye hospitals, trained 345,000 ophthalmologists and other vision care professionals and improved the vision of 71 million children through treatment and glasses recycling.
Last year Lions International began Campaign Sight-First II, to take over the challenge. Our goal was to raise $150 million to expand the work of the original program. We have been so successful in raising money so far that we will probably raise the goal in the near future. When we started there were estimated to be 25 million blind in the world and the World Health Organization said the number would double in 20 years. Twenty eight years later, the number did increase but not as dramatically as predicted. There are now an estimated 37 million blind. But yet again, the WHO expects this to double in 20 years. Lions is committed to keeping that from happening. Your assistance for Lions Sight causes will help.
The Financial Times (London) ranks Lions Club International Fund as the world's top-rated Non-Government Organization (NGO). We are more efficient than other organizations and deliver better bang for your donation buck.