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VISION OF HOPE:
Lions Clubs brings eye screenings, other services to migrant camp
PARRISH - With a few bursts of gentle light aimed at the eyes of
3-year-old Gisela Carranza and her 2-year-old sister, Amy, trained
members of a local Lions Club were able to determine that the girls are
both nearsighted and that anything further away than 5 feet is probably
fuzzy to them.
Typically, parents discover that their children may need glasses on a
visit to the eye doctor. But the girls’ mom, Beatriz Garza, doesn’t
drive and has a job where it is difficult to leave for a doctor’s
appointment.
Garza and her husband, Jose R. Carranza, are migrant farmworkers at the
Whisenant migrant farmworker camp in Parrish and they got the news about
Gisela and Amy a few steps from the cabin that is provided for them by
the farm’s owners.
Vern and Penny Gregrich, who have been trained to use the portable eye
exam device, called a SureSight, were among a group of volunteers from
Lions Clubs in Manatee and
“It is not easy for us to go to a doctor’s appointment because I do not
drive and it is hard to find a time when my husband and I are not
working,” Garza said through an interpreter.
Although she was saddened that her babies need glasses, Garza, who
dreams that her daughters grow up to be lawyers and teachers, realized
that without the Lions Clubs coming out to the camp she might not have
learned about the vision deficiencies for several years.
“Her girls may have reached school and not been able to see the
blackboard,” Vern Gregrich said.
The vision screenings were just one of several services offered to the
migrant workers during a two-hour visit by the Lions Clubs and Manatee
Technical Institute’s Farmworker Education and Services Program.
The migrant workers also received blankets to ward off the cold in their
cabins, and school supplies and candy for their children.
Diabetes and blood pressure screenings were also offered.
The idea for the Lions Clubs to visit the camp came from the Manatee
Technical Institute’s Campus Lions Club, led by president Teresa Slack.
The program and candy gifts were also part of an observance of “Three
Kings Day,” a celebrated day for children in many Latin American
countries.
The $2,500-a-piece, camcorder-size, battery-powered, portable SureSights
throw light through the retina to the back of the eye where the eye can
throw an image back that the device can read.
The shapes it reads can tell an eye doctor reading a series of numbers
if the patient needs glasses.
A month or so from now, Lions volunteers are planning to be back with
donated eye-glasses for Gisela and Amy and for others that needed them
from the screening, Vern Gregrich said.
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