On March 25th, Fairfax Lions conducted both vision and hearing screening of students at St Marks Catholic School in Vienna. We tested vision of 80 students, and hearing of 76 students (grades K/1/3/5/8).  Four students were referred for vision followup with an optometrist, and 10 for hearing followup with an audiologist.  (All children screened had parental approval for the screening.)

Fairfax Lions Club will celebrate its 75th year in 2026. We designed this pin to recognize the event. Join us now to help plan a big celebration and a major service project in 2026. Contact us at: info@fairfaxlions.org

On March 12th, several Fairfax Lions were among members of the community who donated blood at the American Red Cross blood drive sponsored by the Fairfax Lions Club.  Successful blood donations were received from 18 people.  Lions assisted in setting up tables and chairs for Red Cross’s operation and administering the check-in of donors.

On Feb 22, Virginia Lions Eye Institute Foundation presented scholarship checks to 22 recipients of the “Joe Lipomi Scholastic Grants.” The scholarships totaled $49,000. For more information about scholarships, see: https://vleif.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/VLEIF-ScholasticGrant-Application-Updated-9-2024-1.pdf

Speakers included Dr  Mohammed Jaafar, Chair Emeritus of Children’s National Hospital’s Dept of Ophthalmology and also Professor of Ophthalmology & Pediatrics at GW University. The event’s Special Guest speaker was Angel Collaku. Angel himself is vision impaired, and is now a retired career senior attorney for the Federal Aviation Administration. He offered encouragement to vision impaired youth in the context of his own life’s experience: Work hard; be self sufficient; have determination and good judgement; be responsible and know your limits; don’t accept “No;” never stop learning; accept constructive criticism; do what you can, when you can; and be thankful. 

Fairfax Lions Club also presented a cash donation to Virginia Lions Eye Institute Foundation, to support future scholarships.

On February 21, Fairfax Lions presented 42 children’s books to the Main St. Child Development Center.  (Main Street is also our Lions partner when we provide meals to local families for the holidays.)

Main Street’s Director, Susan, gave us a tour of the facilities.  They have a very nice library for their audience of pre-school and young school-age children. Each year, Fairfax Lions help expand the library’s collection with new children’s books.

On June 30, 1925, this bold advocate for the blind challenged Lions Clubs International to be “knights of the blind”…a challenge that has motivated Lions for 100 years to provide vision service programs. Reenactment of Hellen Keller speech: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EurAXgbcai (Helen Keller clip starts at 4:40 mark in this 5 min video)