TO commemorate Lions World Sight Day on Thursday, October 11, the Lions Club of Crediton and District will, by kind permission of Morrisons supermarket in Mill Street, Crediton, have a receptacle in the store for people to donate old, used, spectacles.

The spectacles are being collected at the Crediton store from Monday, October 8 to Saturday, October 13.

Crediton and District Lions Club collect the donated spectacles as part of its Sight Savers Projects.

The spectacles are forwarded to Chichester Lions Club.

The Chichester club has been collecting and sorting used spectacles for almost 35 years.

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 its clinics in Kenya and India.

The collecting area grew and other Lions Clubs were involved and during the next four years some 50,000 specs were sent to M.O.S. in Devon.

In 1985 the Chichester club linked up with the Le Havre Lions and Medico France and during 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 the society needed.

In 1988, another outlet was established through Vision Aid Overseas, and in 1990 Boots the Chemist and Help The Aged joined 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.

Today the Chichester club receives used spectacles from Lions clubs throughout the UK, as well as from opticians and supermarkets.

Volunteers and members sort the spectacles and select the items which are suitable 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.

The club has also developed contacts with individuals and charities based in the UK which are carrying out eye-camp projects overseas which are able to use spectacles the club is recycling and supplying.

Every year the Chicester club sends more than 300,000 pairs of spectacles to Medico France. Through Chichester, the UK Lions Clubs provide more than 50 per cent of the spectacles processed by Medico France - more than any other national group including France itself… with the public’s help.