Member Profile

Lions Clubs International Foundation

Lions Clubs International Foundation (LCIF) is the grant-making arm of Lions Club International, the world’s largest service club organization. LCIF’s primary mission is preventing blindness and restoring sight. It does this through its SightFirst program, which Lions initially generously funded with US$144 million.

SightFirst fights the major causes of blindness: cataract, river blindness, trachoma, and, especially in developed nations like the United States, diabetic eye disease and glaucoma.

SightFirst has given millions the precious gift of sight. LCIF has supported 50 million treatments for river blindness, done 3.5 million cataract surgeries and upgraded 296 eye centers. SightFirst also has built or expanded 154 eye hospitals, expanded six training facilities and trained nearly 70,000 ophthalmic workers. To date, SightFirst has approved 625 projects in 79 nations for a total of US$148 million.

SightFirst is particularly focused on developing regions, where 90 percent of avoidable blindness exists. SightFirst projects typically strengthen eye care infrastructures and eye health delivery systems, train eye care workers, and intervene against the major blinding diseases through large-scale treatment initiatives.

In developed countries, SightFirst fights blindness through its Lions Eye Health Program (LEHP). LEHP is a community-based eye health education program that helps Lions communicate the importance of a dilated pupil exam to those at risk for glaucoma and diabetic eye disease. LEHP has been active in the United States, Japan, the British Isles and Ireland, Canada, Australia and Turkey.

SightFirst also is particularly active in reducing childhood blindness. LCIF is partnering with the World Health Organization on a Childhood Blindness Initiative to prevent blindness in children in 30 developing countries. A $3.75 million SightFirst grant is establishing up to 30 “centers of excellence” on five continents that will train personnel and coordinate blindness prevention efforts.

LCIF’s children’s eye photoscreening program enables Lions to conduct mass Screenings of children for amblyopia (“lazy eye”). The 17 programs have screened more than 200,000 children in developed nations.