Collaborating Partner of this month: Lions Club International Foundation We are very much delighted to collaborate with other Eye Care websites and Resource Centres to reach out more people and develop useful resources. This month we are featuring Lions Club International Foundation as our collaborating partner. Lions Clubs International Foundation, the grant-making arm of Lions Clubs International, brings help, hope and healing to the world. LCIF enables Lions to tackle global problems such as blindness and hearing loss and respond to major catastrophes such as earthquakes and floods. But LCIF also helps Lions serve their local communities by partnering with them to build schools, health clinics and vocational training centers for the disabled. SightFirst is Lions' most ambitious and most successful initiative ever. Thanks to SightFirst, Lions have restored sight to 4.6 million people through cataract surgeries, prevented serious vision loss for 20 million people and improved eye care services for hundreds of millions. Aravind and LCIF: Aravind and LCIF go hand in hand. The Lions Club has supported many activities at Laico and Aravind. LCIF has supported the SF-742 Diabetic Retinopathy project from 2000 to 2004. The main aim of the project is to reduce the blindness resulting from Diabetes and also to develop a model for Diabetic Retinopathy. The project is over last December with the expected outcomes like creating awareness among the people, conducting separate cams for Diabetic Retinopathy, training courses in laser and long term fellowship for ophthalmologists etc. Soon we are going to publish the Diabetic Retinopathy Service model in our site which will be useful for our Users and readers render the service. Hence as part of extending all these activities we are actively looking into ways of strengthening the partnership.