About the Glasses

As you have heard or read by now, we are taking 2000 pairs of prescription glasses with us to Ghana. These are older, used glasses that have been donated to various organizations, such as The Lions Club. The glasses are then sent to more volunteers that have equipment to measure the eyeglasses, one lens at a time, to determine the prescription strength of each side. This information is put in barcode label form on a plastic bag containing the glasses. This is how they look when we receive them.

Now let our FUN begin! We received several shipments of boxes that contained the glasses, the cardboard “trays” with inserts to be assembled, the bigger boxes that hold 2 completed trays, the plastic bags to help protect the boxes from water damage and then the HUGE duffel bags to help transport 2 big boxes holding 320 glasses.

We had lots of help, thanks to many volunteers who taped and labeled the big boxes, labeled the trays and each individual slots, trimmed the cardboard to fit the slots, put labels on the stem of each pair of glasses and another label to number the baggie. You think it’s done now… no, one more major step: scanning each baggie into our glasses inventory program with the number that is now on the baggie. Did I mention we were very thankful for our volunteers?!

When 2 big boxes are complete, they are placed in the HUGE duffel bags. The completed bag weighs about 45 lbs. There are 6 bags and 5 people going. This isn’t counting our luggage. Luckily we won’t be bringing the glasses back to the states with us!

We are also packing some homemade pillowcase dresses inside the duffel bags! Some of the ladies in our church have made some darling dresses mostly made from pillowcases and adorned with lace and fun embroidered applications and ribbon. We should have 60 completed dresses to take with us. How exciting for the little girls that will receive them.

Blessings,

Vicki
P.S. I (Mary) just had to post a pic of Vicki modeling some of the goods. :-)