St Pete Lions Club Projects
Vision, Hearing, & Diabetes
Health screening events are scheduled throughout the year for Infants, Children, Adults, and Seniors. St. Petersburg Lions are available to conduct screenings at your community centers, churches, schools, or other special events. Screenings are fast, painless and free! Additional volunteers are always welcome to assist us! Please contact the Sight Center at (727) 893-7152 or President Brian at (920) 253-8233 for more information.
Diabetes Screenings at the Sunshine Center for Seniors
In July 2015, the St. Petersburg Lions Club began to offer monthly screenings for diabetes at the Sunshine Center. The screenings are scheduled once a month from 9:00 am to 11:00 am: date to be announced in the Sunshine Newsletter. All screenings are conducted free of charge. Clients are asked to fast for at least 1 hour prior to the exam. The Sunshine Center is a nationally accredited multi-service center where seniors gather for support, socialization, fitness and/or other services provided for older people. The Center also houses the Lions’ Sight Clinic, where manager Antoinette Instone discusses the Lions’ financial assistance program with applicants and will guide the clients in completing the necessary forms. Reading glasses and sun glasses are also available, for Sunshine Center clients, for a $2.00 donation.
Partnering with the Pinellas County: Project Homeless Connect
Project Homeless Connect, an offshoot of a national effort, is designed to provide dignified assistance in a one-stop setting. Volunteers assist at least 1,200 people, among them families and veterans. First organized locally by the city of St. Petersburg and the Homeless Coalition in 2007, the event has become a collaboration of groups that include the city, Pinellas County Health and Human Services, the Homeless Coalition and the Salvation Army. Lions can perform sight screenings, offer financial assistance to those needing professional eye care services, and offer free reading glasses.
Dining In the Dark
In 2015, the St. Pete Lions hosted their first Dining in the Dark, an elegant affair with a guest speaker on nutrition and its relevance to healthy vision. Proceeds from this event benefit the St. Petersburg Lions Club Sight Program. The dinner is open to the public! The next event is scheduled for March 2024. Stay tuned for details.
White Cane Day – October 15th
The sighted and visually impaired (blind) will walk together to heighten public awareness to yield to blind pedestrians. This event is held every year at the Lions Club beach house in Treasure Island on the Sunday closets to or on October 15th. In 1930, Lion George A. Bonham, President of the Peoria Lions Club (Illinois) introduced the idea of using the white cane with a red band as a means of assisting the blind in independent mobility. The Peoria Lions approved the idea, white canes were made and distributed, and the Peoria City Council adopted an ordinance giving the bearers the right-of-way to cross the street. News of the club’s activity spread quickly to other Lions clubs throughout the United States, and their visually handicapped friends experimented with the white canes. Overwhelming acceptance of the white cane idea by the blind and sighted alike quickly gave cane users a unique method of identifying their special need for travel consideration among their sighted counterparts.
