Service

Fundraising is how the West Corners Lions Club pays for its work. Service is the work. For more than sixty years, the members of this club have spent their time doing the quiet, practical things a community needs — testing children’s eyesight, reading scholarship applications, restocking food pantry shelves, signing cards for people who don’t get much mail anymore, and showing up for neighbors in the middle of a hard week. None of it makes headlines. All of it matters.

Here’s what that service looks like.

Vision screening for schoolchildren

The club provides free vision screening for children at area schools, using a specialized screening camera that can catch eye abnormalities early — often before a child or parent would notice anything wrong. The club owns its screening camera, and its members are trained to operate it. Catching a vision problem early can change how a child learns, reads, and sees the world, and this is some of the most important work the club does — straight to the founding mission of Lions Clubs everywhere.

Eye exams and glasses

The club helps students in the Maine-Endwell, Union-Endicott, and Vestal districts get the eye care they need. A family doesn’t have to go through the club to use the benefit: most school nurses have a letter they can give a student to take to a local eye care center, where the cost of an exam and glasses is covered. The club funds the benefit; the school nurse and the eye care center handle the rest.

Scholarships for local students

Every year, the club’s scholarship committee reads every word of every application from students across the area’s school districts. The students in this region are extraordinary, and helping a few of them get where they’re going is one of the things this club is proudest of.

Halloween Trunk-or-Treat — books instead of candy

Every Halloween, the club runs a Trunk-or-Treat — but instead of candy, every child goes home with a book. It’s a small idea that does a lot at once: it gets books into kids’ hands, it makes the holiday a little more memorable, and it puts the club shoulder-to-shoulder with families in the community.

If you have children’s books in good condition that your family has outgrown, the club would be glad to give them a second life through this project.

Food pantry support

The club restocks area food pantries — sometimes a planned drive, sometimes just a trunk full of groceries when the shelves are running low. It’s one of the most direct things we do: empty shelves one day, full ones the next.

Holiday clothing and gifts for neighbors in need

At the holidays, the club provides clothing and small gifts for community members who are going without. It’s a season when need is felt sharply, and the club works to make sure local families and individuals aren’t overlooked.

Cards and visits for area nursing homes

Club members sign and deliver cards for residents of local nursing homes — a small thing that means a great deal to someone who doesn’t get much mail. It’s a service project the club has run for years, and one it plans to open up so community members and families can sign cards alongside us.

Help for neighbors facing emergencies

When a family in the community loses a home to fire, or faces a sudden hardship, the club doesn’t wait for the next meeting to vote on it. It acts. This is the part of Lions work that’s hardest to put on a calendar, and it’s also the part that captures what a service club is for.

Special Olympics

The club cooks and serves hot dogs and drinks — free — to Special Olympics athletes, their families and friends, and the volunteers who make the event run. It is not a fundraiser. Nobody pays. It’s the club doing what it does best, in service of an event that deserves it.

Supporting other community organizations

The West Corners club doesn’t try to do everything alone. It also gives to other local organizations doing essential work in the area — among them Mom’s House, CHOW, and Catholic Charities, along with many others. When a group is already serving the community well, helping fund that work is service too.

Beyond West Corners — national and worldwide Lions work

Being part of Lions Clubs International means the club’s reach extends well beyond the village. The West Corners club supports the broader Lions network — including the Lions Clubs International Foundation (LCIF), the Brandel-Murphy Foundation, and the NYS & Bermuda Lions Foundation — as well as organizations like Guide Dogs for the Blind. A donation made in West Corners can end up doing good far from here.

Why sight, and why service

Helping people see has been the central mission of Lions Clubs International since Helen Keller challenged the organization to become “knights of the blind” in 1925. That’s why vision runs through so much of what Lions clubs do — and for the West Corners club, that means owning a screening camera and testing children’s eyes at school, and funding exams and glasses for students who need them. But the work has never stopped at sight. A Lions club serves wherever it sees a need, and in West Corners that has meant students, books, food, families, and neighbors near and far, for over sixty years.

Get involved

Most of this work is done by a small group of members who simply decided to show up. If any of it sounds like something you’d want to be part of — whether that’s joining the club or just lending a hand at a card-signing or a food drive — get in touch through our Contact page. And if you’d like to support the service work directly, our Fundraisers pay for all of it.