Spectrek
For 100 years Lions Clubs all over the world have been working on projects to prevent blindness, restore eyesight and improve eye health and eye care for thousands of people worldwide. So what is Spectrek? Simply put it is a scheme where used spectacles, and hearing aids, are collected from participating Lions clubs at a number of designated pick-up points. They are then passed to Chichester Lions Club for initial sorting prior to optical grading and onward despatch to Third World Countries. Spare frames are then recycled removing precious metals and this money raised is used for sight projects in the UK. In 2016 Lions Clubs in the South of England collected over 140,000 pairs of spectacles that were part of the 300,000 processed from the UK in Chichester and onward shipped after processing to Papua New Guinea, Ghana, Nigeria and Nepal. This brought the total to almost 3 million pairs since the start from the South of England! In terms of cash the precious metals recovered have raised over £200,000 in the last five years alone.
Lions in Farnham recently relaunched the program with more local collection points that can now be found at Vision Express, Leightons, CE Hall, The Optical Studio, Farnham Hospital and the Bourne Surgery as well as all of the following charity shops: Both Phyllis Tuckwell shops, the Downing Street charity shop, Blue Cross, Age UK RSPCA British Heart Foundation, Cancer Research, Oxfam and Sue Ryder.
On the basis that a picture paints a thousand words, below is a picture of our most recent collection - a whole car boot full of old and discarded spectacles, being taken down to Chichester by Lion Mandy. If you have spectacles to donate, please don't throw them away, either place them in the collection boxes as listed above or contact us on our page above and we can advise your nearest location. Thanks in advance for your help.
LATEST NEWS - SPECTREK NOW TAKES HEARING AIDS AS WELL
You can now recycle unwanted hearing aids and they will be put to great use for charity. Just put your unwanted old hearing aids in any Spectrek bin along with any unused pairs of old glasses.
