Greenfield Lions receive recognition for 20 years in KidSight program

January 25, 2021 at 10:56 pm CST

With the help of fellow Lions Club members Jeff LaBarge and Ginny Kufuhs, Dave Huff takes a picture of a student’s eyes as part of the KidsSight vision screening process the Lions help with at NV Elementary School. (Photo by)

GREENFIELD — For 20 years, the Greenfield Lions Club has been involved with the KidSight program, screening the eyesight of children in the community.

Lions Club representative Jeff LaBarge, who has been here for some but not all of those years, said the KidSight program has taken off steadily through time.

Greenfield Lions borrow a camera for the screenings from the Stuart Lions Club. Children at Nodaway Valley Elementary School and local daycares all have eyesight screenings done annually by the Lions.

Pictures are taken of each child’s eyes and those photos are sent to University of Iowa Health in Iowa City.

“It’s all digital,” LaBarge said. “They analyze it and then they give back a report.”

LaBarge said Nodaway Valley school nurse Amy DeVault has become the Lions Club chairperson for the project. Her expertise in the medical field made her a good fit for the job, he said.

Assisting in training regularly are a couple from Villisca who have been serving their community through the KidSight program for decades.

“We had a member once who went through the program and his daughter had a test of her eyes through KidSight. To this day, he said she’s lucky she did it because she could’ve been blind, but KidSight caught it,” LaBarge said. “All of us believe in it. We give our time to it and [20 years for our club] is a great accomplishment, in my opinion.”