By Deb Stafinski
The Vicksburg Lions Club is all in when it comes to supporting people with vision problems, especially our children! Lions Clubs of Michigan began providing free vision screenings for children in 2003 using portable high-tech cameras. The goal is to identify children with vision disorders that hinder their ability to succeed in school and develop normally. The Edwardsburg Lions Club, also known as the “Edwardsburg Project KidSightTeam” brought this new technology to the Vicksburg Lions Summer B&B Festival several years ago. This program has grown considerably in the last three years and now provides screenings in many school districts across five counties in southwest Michigan.
The Vicksburg School District has benefitted from this service since 2021, screening students in K-12 and beyond. The Vicksburg Lions assist with the local screening and with screening in other school districts as needed. The screening takes just a few seconds per child and identifies vision problems with 90% accuracy. The screening detects disorders in several areas including myopia (near-sightedness), hyperopia (far-sightedness), amblyopia (lazy eye) and astigmatism (refractive abnormality), which are common problems that often go undetected. If a problem is identified, parents are notified with the results and a follow-up with an ophthalmologist or optometrist is recommended. This year the Edwardsburg Team screened 22,089 students in southwest Michigan, identifying 2,384 for further testing.
The Vicksburg Lions Club works with local optometrists and families to assist with the cost involved with further screening and the purchase of glasses. Because of the high demand for screening in schools around the area, the Vicksburg Lions Club recently presented the Edwardsburg Team with a new camera and printer at a cost of $9,000 to help sustain this important project. The KidSight Team will be available at the Vicksburg Lions Club Summer B&B Festival during Kids Night, Thursday, July 25th. Join us for a fun evening and free vision screening!
