Making Occluders
Last weekend, one of the service organizations with which I’m involved, Vandy 4 Vision, got together with Alpha Phi Omega, the co-ed service fraternity at Vandy to make occluders for Prevent Blindness Tennessee (PBT).
For those of you who don’t know what occluders are (and this included me until recently), they are the special devices you cover one of your eyes with when you are getting the vision checked in the other. PBT does a lot of vision screenings with kids, and thus don’t want to have to wash every occluder between screenings. So, they use disposible ones instead. When Vandy 4 Vision found out that there was a need for more occluders, we contacted APO and planned this service event together. It was awesome because we got a huge group of people to all volunteer making this one Sunday afternoon. We made well over 200 occluders together, and had a great time.
I definitely appreciate how many service groups there are at Vanderbilt, but sometimes it seems like all the groups are doing very separate things. It was fantastic to get two groups to work together on service – I met a bunch of new people and we got way more done as a group than we would have otherwise. Some people were really artistic, but I stuck to simple geometric patterns, but regardless, the kids will now have fun occluders next time they get their eyes checked!
