Making a difference….Right before your eyes! When you volunteer at a California Lions Friends in Sight (CLFIS) vision screening it is much more than just giving out recycled eyeglasses. You put yourself on a team with dedicated volunteers whose work on any given Saturday restores vision and helps prevent blindness for hundreds of real people who need our help. When you become a CLFIS volunteer, your fellow volunteers jump in to get you started at any one of several patient care work stations. You will be doing things like operating automated measuring instruments, assisting doctors, or helping patients with their “new” eyeglasses. When you become a CLFIS volunteer, you are often rewarded with overwhelming gratitude from the people you served and will have stories to tell of the smiles that appeared right before your eyes.
“It’s always great when you go to these clinics and see all the people lined up… you’ll be changing somebody’s life. Every one of those glasses is going to change someone’s life.”
– David A Radtke I Past Lions Council Chair
“The little ones who’ve never had glasses all of sudden realize something’s different. They sit up straight, their facial expression changes, and then it’s just pure joy”
– lrasema Guzman I Past CLFIS Director
If you are a new volunteer simply select the screenings where you want to volunteer from the VIEW ALL + link at the top of the page and come. No advance registration is needed. Sign-in at the Volunteer Table where you will find lots of good information about California Lions Friends in Sight. It is suggested that you come a little early (Before 8am) to help with set up and to be assigned an area to work.
California Lions Friends in Sight is an all-volunteer organization fully funded by generous donors. We have no paid employees. Please help those in need with a donation. If you, a member of your family, or a friend has been diagnosed with vision threatening eye disease or gone without eyeglasses, you know how debilitating it can be. Your donation will help a child read and see in class. It will touch the lives of other grateful people who might otherwise go without an eye health screening and eyeglasses. Click here to make a donation.
How donations are used:
Don’t throw away your old eyeglasses! You can donate them at hundreds of drop off locations throughout Southern California. Just click on the link below and enter your zip code to find a doctor’s office, business or church that collects them for pick up by Lions Club volunteers. By donating your old prescription eyeglasses, you are giving the gift of sight to someone in need. And, you can donate eyeglass cases and sunglasses. We give them to vision screening patients as an added benefit. Click here to find a drop off location near you. If you don’t find a drop off location near you, contact a local Lions Club or mail to California Lions Friends in Sight, P.O. Box 7, Beaumont, CA 92223.
Our vision screenings would not be possible without the help of volunteers working behind the scenes. It all starts with collecting donated eyeglasses. Volunteers then sort, sanitize, and measure the power of the lenses. Other volunteers load data to complete the computerized inventory management process. You can even work in the CLFIS optical lab making eyeglasses for patients for whom a match could not be found at their screening. Here are a few more behind the scenes volunteer opportunities for you to consider:
If you have an interest in joining with other volunteers working behind the scenes and want to learn more, send an email inquiry to info@californialionsfriendsinsight.org
Help us extend our helping hand
Together, We Make Tomorrow Look Better