BY JANE DANCHISEN PITTMAN

March is National Eye Donor Awareness Month and the Marblehead Peninsula Lions Club urges residents of the Marblehead, Lakeside and Danbury communities to give the gift of sight.

According to Heidi Gast, the Lions Club vision chair, National Eye Donor Awareness Month is a commemoration dedicated to increasing eye donation awareness, honoring donors and their families and celebrating cornea recipients.

“Many people do not realize part of the eye – the clear cornea – can be donated and transplanted,” explained Gast. “Nearly everyone can be a corneal donor and it is free. It is not based on age, blood type or how good a person’s eyesight is. Over 80,000 corneal transplants from donated corneas were performed in the U.S. in 2016.

“We also get exams and eye glasses for those in need in our community and collect new and used glasses to distribute,” said Gast. The Marblehead Peninsula Lions Club gives free eye screenings at Danbury Local Schools and has provided reading magnifiers to enlarge reading material for residents of local retirement communities.

To register to be an eye donor, go to the Central Ohio Lions Club website at www.coleb.org. Or, when getting a new driver’s license, check the box to be a donor.

For information on how to donate or receive glasses, or about joining the Marblehead Peninsula Lions Club, call John Englebeck at 419-635-6935.

Lions Clubs International is a service organization whose mission is “to empower volunteers to serve their communities, meet humanitarian needs, encourage peace and promote international understanding through Lions clubs. Individual clubs work with the local community to provide needed and useful health-related programs for sight, diabetes awareness and hearing.

March is Eye Donor Awareness Month. Promoting this initiative are Marblehead Peninsula Lions (left to right) Heidi Gast, John Englebeck, Tod Kelly and Jane Danchisen Pittman