BROOMFIELD — Barbara Kelly spotted, and seized, an opportunity to help others see.
Friday, she will join medical professionals and other volunteers for more than a week in Lesvos, a Greek island between Greece and Turkey, to provide vision aid to Syrian refugees.
Kelly is not a medical provider but was trained by an optometrist to test vision with an old-fashioned eye chart and match those findings with donated glasses.
Since that training more than a year ago, she has provided aid to prisoners in La Paz, Bolivia, and poverty-stricken Haiti.
“(Bolivia had) the poorest conditions I had ever seen at that point — until I got to Haiti,” Kelly said. “The parts we went to had been devastated by the earthquake — rubble swept to the side of the streets.”
Kelly said the trips are “perspective restoring” and never fail to remind her how fortunate she is.
“I feel sorry for people who stand on corners, and I don’t mean to minimize them, but what you see in Haiti and Bolivia — (they’re) devastated.”
While volunteering in Bolivia, she saw children living in jail cells with their parents as the adults await trial.
“Can you imagine what kind of life that is for children?” she said. “At least I could give glasses to kids.”
Kelly is volunteering with International Medical Relief, a nonprofit organization that supplies medical services around the world.
She is raising $3,200 to cover airfare, accommodations, meals, medical supplies, equipment and in-country transportation.
“The Broomfield community has been just wonderful,” Kelly said. “I’ve gotten eyedrops at a discount. Eye doctors’ offices have been wonderful about giving me eye charts. People have really come together.”
Glasses are collected throughout the state and sent to Sterling, where prisoners repair them and return the glasses to clubs, which then distribute to those in need, mostly overseas.
David Conley, chairman of the Colorado Used Eyeglass Program, said Kelly is taking 1,910 pairs of glasses to Lesvos — 640 prescription glasses, 250 readers, 120 children’s prescription glasses and 900 pairs of nonprescription sunglasses.
The program is also sending about 300 soft cases.
This is the third time the program, run by the Sterling Lions Club, has coordinated with Kelly.
The used-eyeglasses program has been running since 1999 and is a joint effort among all Colorado Lions Clubs; Logan Industries in Sterling, a subsidiary of the Eastern Colorado Services for the Developmentally Disabled Inc.; and the Sterling Correctional Facility.
“We have provided over 750,000 pairs of used eyeglasses to mission groups that have gone mainly to Africa and South America,” Conley said in an e-mail. “We are always looking for other mission groups that may want to take used eyeglasses on their missions.”
Kelly, a substitute math and science teacher for the Boulder Valley School District, also plans to give out “readers” donated by local businesses and sunglasses.
She’ll be in Lesvos through Feb. 1.
“My time is my own,” she said. “That’s a wonderful thing about being a sub.”
Usually, Kelly sorts the glasses by herself at home, but this year she received help from Broomfield teenagers.
Pauline Noomnam, a teen librarian at the Mamie Doud Eisenhower Public Library, recruited volunteers who helped sort nearly 800 glasses at the nonprofit’s warehouse Jan. 9.
International Medical Relief generally hosts about 30 trips a year to areas around the world with limited or no access to health care.
Shauna King, president of International Medical Relief, said about 20 people will go on this mission, including doctors, nurses, medical students, a disaster and refugee trained psychologist and Kelly. Several more have applied, King said, such as oral surgeons and other medical providers.
International Medical Relief dispatched a crew to Lesvos over a month ago to organize lodgings, a clinic station, transportation and line up interpreters.
Roughly 1,500 refugees arrive in Lesvos on overloaded boats on a daily basis, King said, and most are there temporarily.
