(Photo courtesy of the Lions Club)
The Levittown Lions Club is on a mission to help children in the area. Parents of toddlers might not know their children have eye issues, but the Lions Club is aiming to help as much as they can.
With a Welch Allyn vision scanner, the Lions Club conducted a vision screening on 36 kids, each of whom were around 3 years old. The scan, which only takes a few seconds to find any potential eye problems, found that five children had a defect.
“One little girl showed a pupil way out of line,” fundraising chairperson Les Rummel said. “This just tore me up and I knew that I had to get my own vision screener.”
In total, Lions Clubs across Nassau County have three vision scanners that local chapters are allowed to borrow. Whenever the Levittown club uses it, they make sure it’s the Welch Allyn version since it’s the easiest and most efficient to operate.
Inspired by the one girl with the pupil issue, the Levittown Lions Club created a fundraising campaign to purchase their own scanner, which usually costs about $7,800. By the end of March, Rummel and Co. raised $4,700 through different raffles at Levittown Lanes and VFW Post 9592.
“I found a Welch Allyn distributor in Farmingdale that would let me get one for $6,700,” Rummel said. “So I added the difference and I picked it up.”
Rummel is in contact with different schools in Levittown, which he said are interested “in having their pre-school children screened.” He also said Levittown Lanes wants to hold free weekend screenings, as well as local libraries.
In addition, the Lions Club will contact nursery schools to let them know about this free service. For those interested in the vision scanner, they can visit www.lionsoflevittown@aol.com.
