During the past ten years, Lions Recycle for Sight Australia, Inc., has collected close to 4 million pair of spectacles thanks to an Australia Post Reply Paid Facility, 1,000 Lions/Lioness Clubs in Australia and several hundred clubs in Japan. The Centre has shipped close to 3.5 million pair throughout the world, including several countries in Africa, the Middle East, India and Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nepal, Kurdystan and Moldova in Europe, most countries in Asia including Papua New Guinea, Timor Leste, Philippines, China, American Samoa, Vanuatu, Solomon Islands, Fiji, Vietnam, Laos and Afghanistan as well as the smallest islands in the Indonesian Archipelago Pacific.
The programme operates in five locations. Two are manned by Lions supervisors and three are self-managed in correctional institutions. At all these centres, recycling and training are prime functions. Persons who have transgressed the law are trained to process the spectacles, providing them with skills and work ethics to help their rehabilitation back into contemporary society.
In addition to the process of sorting, grading and packaging boxes of 250 pair of spectacles and sunglasses, the Centre has installed lens making equipment in one, and soon three locations, to augment their capacity to service the needs of the Third World.
Recently the programme added a sponsorship with an on-line prescription maker to provide one free pair of spectacles for every pair sold on line – estimated at 5,000 pair of new spectacles in a year. Currently the programme receives 500,000 pair annually from Australia and Japan, and it refurbishes and distributes about the same number to groups around the world.
