ASHLAND — When a pair of eyeglasses gets donated to a Goodwill Industries store in Ashland, Richland, Portage, Medina, or Summit County, they might end up on a globe-spanning journey to a country in need thanks to the Ashland Evening Lions Club.
By law, Goodwill cannot resell prescription eyeglasses.
So in 2008, the manager of Ashland’s Goodwill store, Kathy Pfahler, had the idea to give the unsellable glasses to the Ashland Evening Lions Club to be sorted and sent overseas to people in need.
Fifteen years later, the Ashland Evening Lions Club has recycled over 100,000 pairs of eyeglasses, a feat that earned the club a plaque and a visit from the CEO of Goodwill Industries of Akron, Nancy McClenaghan, at its Feb. 16 meeting.
“Thank you for the positive difference that you make in your community every day,” Clenaghan told the club.
When Goodwill Industries of Akron, which operates in Ashland, Richland, Summit, Portage and Medina counties, receives a pair of eyeglasses, they are loaded onto a truck and shipped to the Ashland Goodwill store.
From there, Ashland Evening Lions Club member Ann Miller — who is also the mother of Kathy Pfahler — loads the boxes into her SUV, and she takes them to the club to be sorted and counted.
“Last month I put 21 boxes into my SUV. And there were 15 boxes last week that I got, so it’s a continuing thing,” Miller said.
Another Lions Club member, Darrell Lindner, picks up even more glasses from the “6 or 7” glasses drop boxes the club has set up around Ashland, Miller added.
Glasses with unusual shapes, or “funglasses,” as Miller calls them, are separated from the rest, along with any glasses cases or contact lenses.
The “funglasses” are donated to children’s charities, and the contact lenses are donated to the Ashland Christian Health Center. Meanwhile, the cases are donated to charities that repurpose them into first aid kits, coloring kits, and more.
The normal prescription glasses are sent to Pandora, Ohio, where they are cleaned, graded and packaged by other Lions clubs, The Ohio State University and Volunteer Optometric Services for Humanity International (VOSH).
After figuring out the glasses’ prescriptions and washing them in a special dishwasher designed specifically for eyewear, VOSH volunteers take the glasses on medical mission trips around the world, where they are handed out to people in developing nations.
Dr. Jim Patterson of Ashland Eyecare volunteers for VOSH, and he’s seen the impact of the Lions Club’s glasses up close during his mission trips to the Dominican Republic.
“When people put on a pair of glasses and they can see, it’s really a remarkable thing,” he said.
When the recycling program first started, the Lions Club received no more than 5,000 pairs of glasses a year. But around 2015, the club started receiving glasses from all over north central Ohio when other Lions Clubs shifted away from glasses recycling.
Now, the Ashland club sorts over 10,000 pairs a year.
“To be perfectly honest, we’ve recycled 100,730 pairs as of the 6th of this month. So I think that’s pretty darn good,” Miller said.
