ELLIJAY LIONS CLUB VISION SERVICE PROGRAM

During it's seventy plus years of service to the community, the Ellijay Lions Club has remembered Helen Keller's plea for Lions International to help those who are visually impaired throughout the world.

With this spirit and duty in mind, the Ellijay Lions joined with the other clubs in the state of Georgia in the creation and support of the Georgia Lions Lighthouse Foundation. This organization is dedicated to provide assistance in obtaining vision appliances for those citizens of Georgia who cannot afford vision assistance because of a meager income. They provide eyeglasses to those individuals in need. Critical eye surgeries are also arranged through the Lighthouse program.

Throughout each year, the Ellijay Lions Club collects thousands of used eyeglasses and/or lenses which are shipped to the Lighthouse to be refurbished and distributed to thousands of worthy recipients throughout the State of Georgia.

For the past fifteen years, the Ellijay Lions Club has gone one step further and instituted its own Vision Service Program. With the cooperation of local vision service providers, the Club began purchasing eyeglasses for school children who needed eyeglasses, but family funding, simply was out of the question.

As additional funding became available within the Club, the local program was expanded to assist the elderly and infirmed, who wanted to read and expand their horizons, but lacked the finances to purchase eyeglasses.

Today, the Ellijay Lions Club provides its local community a Vision Service Program that encompasses all of its neighbors in need, regardless of gender, race, or ethnic background. This program is liberally funded and managed by volunteers within the club itself without "outside assistance". Literally, hundreds of Gilmer County citizens are wearing eyeglasses provided by their local Lions Club which daily lives up to the motto, "We Serve".

We are duly proud of this service to our community and consider it to be a model project for other Lions Clubs to emulate.

Lion Bill Leinmiller, Chairman

Vision Services Program

For more information on the Vision Service Program in Gilmer County, contact the Lions Club at (706)635-5901 or email information@ellijaylionsclub.com