The gift of sight is one to be cherished and taken care of. All we need to do is see and appreciate its value.

Blair Health Academy, together with Men Educating Men About Health (MEMAH), aims to educate the young people on the basics and importance of eye health with the Lions Club’s Eyemobile.

The partnership was formed when “we were contacted by MEMAH and asked if we were interested in a partnership and of course we jumped on the opportunity,” says Debbie Curtin, director of the Blair Health Careers Academy.

Courtain tells us how “this kind of opportunity, gets our students a chance to be trained and exposed to health professionals, how to work with patients and clients.”

The Lions International Eyemobile, is a “a van that’s totally equipped with eye and hearing equipment,” says Curtin.

An optometrist and audiologist volunteers their services while students help them by “organizing the patients, taking the patients’ histories and doing the initial eye exam, and then filtering the patients into the eye doctor and the hearing where they do the actual test. The patient would come out of the bus and we would do any referral that the doctor’s recommended,” says Curtin.

For the high school students, it is a chance to have them involved in community service. This is important for them, Curtin says, because “all colleges and employers want to look and see what these kids get back to the community before they take them in.”

The students will also get to learn the “soft skills which would employ ability skills like customer service, patient care, communication, technical fields, etc.,” Curtin explains.

Also, Curtin adds, the students “can use these hours towards their internship. They need to complete 180-hour internship in the health field and so that also helps them to be employable and helps colleges, universities to look at them because they have a little bit more than the average student would have.”

The eyemobile is part of the Pasadena Host Lions International, and the students are part of the Leo Club, “which is like the baby Lions,” says Curtin. So in a way, these students are being mentored by the Lions Host by providing the eyemobile and the opportunity to hone and sharpen their skills in health care.

To learn about the Pasadena Host Lions Club, visit http://www.pasadenahostlions.org for more information.

For more on Blair High School, located at 1201 South Marengo Ave., visit http://blair.pasadenausd.org.

Discover what MEMAH is all about by visiting http://memah.org.