Milford High Transition-Vocation Students: 'You are Our Heroes!'

Don Fortin, Lions District 33A Eyeglass Recycling Coordinator, honored eight students and their Vocational Coordinator, Nathan Gaucher, with this pronouncement: 'You are our heroes!' at an appreciation party on Thursday, January 23rd, at Milford High School. Pictured above are the students with Nathan, as well as Don with students Katie Williams and Colin Eliason.

Each year, the Lions in central Massachusetts collect all sorts of donated eyeglasses from collection bins scattered throughout the area in libraries, supermarkets, senior centers, and vision centers. The donations, exceeding 20K pairs, include readers, prescription eyewear, sunglasses, and bifocals. District 33A Lions sort the readers by strength and bundle the sunglasses for distribution.

However, the prescription eyewear requires specialized equipment, called a Lensometer, to determine the prescription strength. That's where these amazing Milford students take over! They carefully identify the prescription on each pair, so that someone else, perhaps living on a Native American Reservation or in a third world country, who require the same prescription strength, may use them to regain their sight. These simple donations literally give underprivileged folks the ability to get a job, go to school, and live in the sighted world that we may all take for granted. Remarkably, Milford High School Transition-Vocation students have been partnering with the Lions in this effort for that past ten years!

Once the prescription strength is identified, the eyeglasses are sent back to Don, so that he may send them to several distribution partners, who can get them to where they are needed. Don has worked with Visions International, Artists for World Peace, local church groups, who regularly visit third world countries, and the Worcester Free Clinic to distribute the glasses and frames. Don has also personally travelled to Haiti on many occasions to distribute the thousands of glasses that these students have sorted.

To thank and celebrate the wonderful work that these students do, Don, in conjunction with the Milford Lions Club, organized an appreciation luncheon and recognition ceremony.

District 33A Lions cannot thank the students and staff in the Transition-Vocation Department at Milford High School enough for their dedication, enthusiasm, and hard work! They truly embody the Lions motto: We Serve!

To learn more about District 33A Lions, please visit their website at https://www.lionsdist33a.org.