View Videos: See us at work Visit to workshop at Medico France Satisfied customers
DEVELOPMENT OF THE PROJECT
We have been collecting and sorting used spectacles for almost 27 years. Collecting spectacles for recycling was a club activity as far back as 1967, however it became a major project for the club in 1980 with a delivery of 700 sorted specs to the Missionary Optical Society in Devon for use in their clinics in Kenya and India.
Our collecting area soon grew and other Lions Clubs started feeding their collections to us. Over the next four years some 50,000 specs were sent to M.O.S. in Devon.
In 1985 we linked up with the Le Havre Lions and Medico France and over the following five years some 100,000 specs, 43,000 lenses, and 10,000 frames were sent to Medico France while still delivering to M.O.S. as many pairs of sorted specs as they needed.
In 1988, another outlet was established through Vision Aid Overseas, and in 1990 Boots the Chemist and Help The Aged joined us in a national campaign which produced 460,000 pairs of specs in six months. Once sorted they went to places such as Cameroon, Senegal, Ivory Coast, Sri Lanka, India, Zanzibar, Jamaica, Bolivia and Brazil. All that took more resources than the Club could sensibly provide.
Today we are receiving used spectacles from Lions clubs throughout the UK, as well as from opticians and supermarket sources within our own City. Spectacles are delivered to us in boxes and bags of all shapes and sizes and are processed by our club members and other volunteers in our workshop. We use our considerable experience to select the items that are suitable for recycling and to sort them in preparation for onward transmission to Medico France in Le Havre. Medico France have the necessary equipment to clean and grade the spectacles ready for use in eye camps in Africa, India and Eastern Europe.
We have recently developed, with the help of the Inside Out Trust, facilities for grading spectacles in the UK and have shipped directly to Ghana, Papua New Guinea, Nepal and recently to Nigeria. In each case, the glasses are sent directly to known or Lions club contacts. We have also developed contacts with individuals and charities based in the UK who are carrying out eye-camp projects overseas, who are able to use spectacles that we are recycling and supplying to them.
We are very grateful to the Apuldram Centre who have made land available for our workshop, the many Lions clubs who collect spectacles and send them to us, the shops, surgeries and organisations who provide facilities for collection bins, Parcelforce, without whose help the scheme could not function - and also to the members of the Chichester club who have committed their time and expertise to the project. Pictures.
Last year we sent over 300,000 pairs of spectacles to Medico France. Through Chichester the UK lions clubs provide more than 50% of the spectacles processed by Medico France - more than any other national group including France itself.
Firstly a big THANK
YOU to all those Lions Clubs, opticians, and all the various
organisations in the medical field and outside it who have helped collect and
deliver to us the thousands of used specs we have processed during the last
year.
Braintree Lions Club recently received
5000 pairs of spectacles donated by Stansted Airport lost property department
via the Braintree branch of Specsavers.
Then a rather special THANK YOU to PARCEL FORCE for transporting so many specs from all parts of the country FREE OF CHARGE and to FRASER FREIGHT of Portsmouth for transporting sorted spectacles FREE OF CHARGE to Medico France in Le Havres, and to F & G transport in Bognor for their generous help in moving loads within the UK.
A final special THANK YOU to The Apuldram Centre for providing us with the land and facilities for our workshop.
To avoid unnecessary handling, we would be grateful if you would throw away the following before shipment:
There are 2 methods of shipping specs to us:
|
|
|
| Colin Bradshaw from Corby Lions Club delivering spectacles to Apuldram | |
Pack the specs loose in stout well sealed boxes, each measuring no more than 50 x 33 x 33cm (20 x 13 x 13 ins) with a maximum weight of 10kg.
Address them to: Chichester Lions Club, c/o The Apuldram Centre, Common Farm, Appledram Lane South, Chichester, West Sussex, PO20 7PE.
Mark each parcel: ARTICLES FOR THE BLIND - CONTRACT No. R233259
Please include your name and address, preferably on a separate sheet inside the box. We like to send an acknowledgement and we will also ensure that you receive our newsletter.
Phone the Parcelforce Datapost Collection Centre on 0844 800 4466 and quote the contract number R233259 in order to request a collection (48 hours).
If you have any difficulty please contact Lion Sue Boucher on 01243 785737 or email to sight@chilions.org.uk
Instructions for clubs in Ireland
 |
All the specs you send us are sorted by a
team of Lions in a small workshop at the Apuldram Centre. Visits
can be arranged if you let us know in advance - perhaps when delivering specs
to us.
Sorted spectacles are graded by Medico France in Le Havres, Click the link at the top of the page to view a video of our recent visit to the Medico workshops in Le Havres. Inside Out Trust in the UK also grade spectacles for us in two UK prisons using equipment provided by Chichester Lions. Graded spectacles are supplied to order to developing countries for use in clinics and eye hospitals. |
 |
 |
|
Sorted spectacles awaiting shipment to Le Havres |
Workshop at Medico France |
We have shipped spectacles directly to known contacts undertaking eye clinics in Papua New Guinea, Ghana, Nigeria and Nepal.
View slideshow of some of our customers in Papua New Guinea.
|
Email received from Papua New Guinea: Just to let
you know how useful the glasses are here in PNG , and to thank you and
Medico for all the work you did to make their safe arrival so successful. |
||
| Photos from Tamale in Ghana | ||
|
|
 |
|
|
 |
|
|
This
is one of a
series of albums that have been sent by Udaya Wanduragala. He is from Sri
Lanka and has received from us in the past frames, lenses etc that he has
taken out to Sri Lanka. He obtains the
prescriptions in advance from old peoples homes, orphanages, schools,
etc., and then with our frames, lenses, and lenses that he is given
by an American company he puts them together to take there and
dispenses them. He often takes the lenses from our sorted specs and
replaces them. He is hoping to
visit there again later in the year and take some more of our specs. To date he has
dispensed 600 pairs and as you can see from the first photo, this chap was
very much in need! Click here to view photos from Balangoda, Sri Lanka |
||
|
Extract from email from William Moen who took 400 pairs of glasses on a mission to India with Unite for Sight. My trip has been a wonderful experience, and one I am unlikely to forget. I was the only foreigner living with Indians in local hospital accommodation. The majority of my days consisted of getting up around five o’clock in the morning and driving to remote towns and villages in districts around my hospital. The weather was extremely hot and many of the journeys took 5 or so hours each way. Terrible roads and a rickety old bus did not help matters. Once at our destination, we screened patients for eye problems and prepared them for the operations they would have back at the hospital. My main jobs at these camps were to distribute glasses (which I had brought with me from England) to those with Myopia and Hyperopia, record a register of names for all the patients and assist doctors and nurses in vision tests and medicals (taking blood pressure and eye pressure amongst other things). I also observed the surgeries and assisted nurses with various jobs. |
|
|
|
Extract from email from Lucinda on a mission to Ghana with Unite for Sight
The
last two weeks have been fairly hectic, first working alongside the
Crystal Clinic team in Accra, and this week with the Christian Eye Clinic
team who are primarily based in Tema just along the road. Last week we
foolishly gave up one of our days off, in order to help the team screen
some of the children at Osu Children's home in Central Accra. This was
quite a mammoth task, there are 250 children at the home aged
between 0 and 23 years and although we only saw around half that number we
spent a lot of time and energy persuading the younger ones just to sit
still! We also met the home supervisor who keeps the entire place up and
running and ensures that each child has the support that he or she needs
- no mean feat given the constraints on time and resources which she has
to cope with. |
|
|
|
|
|
Recycling of scrap material from broken and unsuitable spectacles yields funds which support the sorting operation and enable us to give financial support to eye related projects in the UK and overseas.
Since the inception of our Sight project we have donated approaching £200,000 to sight related scheme.
We have donated £11,500 to the Lions sightFirst II campaign. This campaign, which has achieved it's aim of raising $160 million worldwide, follows on from an earlier fundraising campaign which has enabled Lions International to be a major funder of treatment to combat preventable blindness through disease. To read more about SightFirst II click here.
For other donations to sight related causes see our welfare page.
We have supplied local hospitals, opticians and Lions Clubs throughout the UK with specially prepared collection bins. These have proved a great success, we can provide the signage to other clubs for locally purchased bins. Please contact Lion John Lanham on 01243 785345 or email sight@chilions.org.uk.
Click thumbnail for full size view. 
