Lending hands and lenses: Local Lions revamping eyeglasses recycling program in Casper

CASPER, Wyo. — Sight conservation, Casper Mountain Lions Club Member Hubert Townsend said, is one of the key service missions of Lions internationally. Given that, it was about time for an overhaul of how Casper played its part in donating glasses across the globe.

In Casper, Lions with the Casper Lions Club and the Casper Mountain Lions Club worked in tandem for years cutting deals with optometrists and big retailers like Walmart to get glasses out to people and get community members eye tests when they couldn’t otherwise afford them.

Despite the program’s relative success — glasses were getting donated and sent out to people — Townsend knew there had to be a better way to get the community involved and collect even more glasses than before in the process.

“Lions have always done optometry — that has always been one of our service projects,” Townsend said. “It wasn’t being promoted, but they were collecting glasses.”

When Walmart started taking the donations and sending them off to larger Lions organizations in the eastern United States, local Lions were left with very minimal involvement in one of the cornerstones of their mission. Townsend, though, said he wanted to get off his butt and revamp the process locally.

He made a few calls within his club, the Casper club, and the Cheyenne and Rawlins clubs and, in partnership with those organizations, streamlined the way Casper residents can donate their glasses and how people within the state can benefit from it.

Townsend set up boxes all across Casper at various churches and optometrist shops and asked people there to consider donating used glasses. So far, in just a few months, Townsend is collecting about nine to 10 boxes each with about 250 pairs of glasses before taking the trip to the glasses’ next destination: Rawlins.

They are stored at fellow Lion Dr. Kenneth Morse’s Wyoming Optical optometry center in Casper before Lions from Rawlins pick them up.

The Rawlins Lions Club has a partnership with the Wyoming State Penitentiary, where inmates are specially trained to operate a lensometer.

“You put the lens in a certain spot and you look through this microscope,” Townsend said. “You’ve got these little lines and when you match them all up and put them in focus, you read the dial and the dial reading will tell you what the prescription is for each lens.”

What is especially important, Townsend said, is that the inmates operating the lensometer and taking part in the program get paid for this work. He said that, although the prescriptions could be read at the glasses’ final destination, it’s important that some people in Wyoming get to have a job out of the process.

Finally, these cleaned and clearly labeled and sorted glasses will go to Rosholt, Wisconsin, with the Wisconsin Lions Foundation. According to the club, Lions in Wisconsin collected nearly 1.3 million pairs of glasses in one year between the end of June 2023 and July 2024. In that same time, they successfully distributed over 200,000 pairs globally to people in need.

Now Lions and community members in Casper are better connected to a global effort to improve vision-care access for those who can’t afford it. And though all the glasses in Casper are just a drop in the bucket, Townsend said he is proud to see they’re getting out there.

“We’re Christians. We believe we are our brother and sister’s keepers, and I know what it’s like to not have glasses because I broke mine and I had to wait two months,” Townsend said. He pointed to a TV 10 feet in front of him and continued. “This is blurry right now. Anyway, this is a way of helping your fellow man out. Can’t hurt my karma, either.”

For more information on the Casper Mountain Lions Club, see the group’s profile on Facebook. See the Lions Club International Facebook page as well for more information on the organization as a whole.