From the Lions Den February, 2017
|
During our January general meeting, we honored our departed Lions member, Marion Worrall, with a minute of silence. She served with us until she could serve no longer. Her kind nature and generous spirit will be missed. We received a “Thank You” for our contribution to the Ag Hall renovation. The project is now complete and looks terrific. Len Epp thanked the volunteers who set up the colorful lights in the Japanese gardens and those who also came out to dismantle and store away the lights. 920 people came through the Christmas light up at the gardens this past season! Janet Guy spoke about “Spot scanners” used to detect eye problems in children for our Lions district. The plan is to have one scanner in each of the 7 zones. (A 30% increase in myopia was discovered in one school district between 2 testing periods.) The machine(s) are stored on Salt Spring Island, but will have been employed in our local school by press time. Hopefully our students’ eyes will be problem free. However, we do encourage moderate use of visual technology (Games, TV, etc.) to allow for healthy outdoor time for natural distant vision exercise. Toby Snelgrove reported that progress is going well with this year’s phone book and was requesting more photos for inserts in the interior pages. What a year this is for the International Lions! Clubs all over the world are celebrating the 100th birthday of the Lions. June 30 to July 4, the Centennial convention will be happening in Chicago. This is a huge, colorful international event. Still on the international theme, over 2000 kits of medical supplies and food packages were sent to Haiti to help with relief after hurricane Matthew. An emergency grant to the North Carolina Lions to provide food, water, blankets and medical supplies was supplied to help with disaster effected areas. Lions provided new technology and screening for young children in Cuba to diagnose and treat retinopathy of prematurity, which has rescued many young children from permanent blindness. Stay tuned for the release of our local Lions centennial project, and remember to bring your “no longer being used” eyeglasses to one of several drop-off boxes on the island. Someone out there will be able to use them. David Chase http://www.mayneislandlions.org |
