Torrevieja Costa Lions Club working with Specsavers

THE Torrevieja Costa Lions were recently invited along to attend the Specsavers Torrevieja Open Day.

For more than four years Specsavers have been helping the Lions by collecting used spectacles for onward delivery to the Lions Melvin Jones recycling centre near Alicante.

To date they have collected more than 6,500 pairs.

At the recycling centre the glasses are cleaned, graded in terms of prescription, single vision, bi focal and varifocal and then reframed for distribution to countries where no eye health care is provided.

Sunglasses are also collected for onward distribution.

Recently the recycling centre received an order for 40,000 pairs of spectacles to be sent to Mozambique which was duly despatched.

Other Countries supported from Alicante include Peru, Sri Lanka and many African nations.

Lions Clubs International have thousands of eye specialists all round the world who provide tests, advice and eye health care where none would normally be available.

An eight year old Sri Lankan boy was diagnosed by a Lions appointed eye specialist, who said that the boy would probably be blind by the time he was 14-years-old, but thanks to Lions intervention and provision of Spectacles from the Lions recycling centre in Alicante the young boys’ eyesight has been saved.

The recycling depot is run by Lion members, all volunteers, plus Alicante University regularly provides two students to assist, as part of their University training.

The centre receives donation from all over Spain and Portugal. The Torrevieja Costa Lions are extremely grateful to Specsavers and to the public who continue to hand in their used spectacles for recycling.

Your donations can and do make a difference so please continue to support the Lions and hand your used specs into Specsavers in Torrevieja.