Rhode Island Lions Sight Foundation

 Johnston     Rhode Island

http://www.lions4sight.org/     << visit website

Categories:  Disabilities, Research, (view all).

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Rhode Island Lions Sight Foundation Charity Profile

The Rhode Island Lions Sight Foundation was founded in 1961 as the charitable arm of the Lions Clubs of Rhode Island for the preservation of sight and aid to the visually impaired.

As such, the Sight Foundation is affiliated with Lions Clubs International, which is the world's largest service organization. The Foundation is comprised of delegates from each Lions Club in Rhode Island who then elect the officers of the Foundation annually, in accordance with the bylaws.

Although the Lions Sight Foundation is best known for its vision screenings at local businesses, schools and health fairs, and for its collection of used eyeglasses for distribution in Third World countries, the Foundation also engages in many other activities. Examples are:

Approved scores of grants to visually impaired Rhode Islanders for corrective surgery, prostheses or technical visual equipment to afford those individuals an opportunity for a full and productive life.

The sponsor of Camp Mauchatea, a weeklong summer camp for Rhode Island's visually impaired youngsters.

Provided "large print" books and audiocassettes to every library in the state.

Underwritten a research project at Women & Infants Hospital to study severe vision loss in premature infants caused by blood vessel growth in a baby's premature retina.

One of the Foundation's proudest contributions to sight conservation has been the purchase of six PO2 monitors which prevent premature blindness by carefully monitoring the intake of oxygen by premature infants at Women & Infants Hospital in Providence.

The latest Foundation undertaking is the Lions 4 Sight program, supported by a CORE 4 LCIF Grant to implement a statewide, pre-school children's vision screening program utilizing photo screening. Started in 2001, this 3-year program is our largest scale endeavor with a goal to provide 10000 screenings per year with the assistance of Rhode Island Lions clubs along with a staff dedicated to the administration and coordination of the program.

We’re proud to say that this program was very successful in meeting it’s goal and screened over 30000 children under the age of 6 and resulted in the referral of nearly 5% of the children screened to doctors for confirmation. The accuracy of these referrals was over 75%.

In addition to the above, the Foundation continues to services the visually impaired where the need for assistance exceeds local Lions club resources or in areas of the state without a local Lions club presence.