Thanks to VISION2020, Lions Club of Perugia, Italy and Lions of Limbe, Malawi are to help blind children in Phalombe, Malawi

These days one receives so many scam and malware-ridden emails, imagine a stranger writing out of the blue, offering to give you USD 10,000 if you get back to them. Most of us, me included, would disregard such an email or trash it - as I almost did years ago. Thank God, I did not delete one particular email and this is why as I am blogging, now that USD 10,000 has been transferred to the Lions Club of Limbe in Malawi to help the blind and visually impaired!

You see, Lion Marco Terzetti of Perugia Lions club in Italy had by chance came across my blog site in December 2008, and was fascinated by my articles on VISION 2020 - the global initiative to fight avoidable blindness and what was being done in Malawi, especially with regard to blind and visually impaired children. At that time I was blogging frequently about the project I was launching in Southern Malawi to help blind children and the challenges we were facing in Malawi. In all honesty, I wasn’t blogging to ask for money from anyone. So when Marco emailed back with a few words saying “email me back to collect a cheque for your project in Malawi”, I said to myself here we go, another Nigerian email claiming that thousands of dollars have been left in a bank in Abuja and that I should help and get a 50% share ( and I do get a lot of these emails lately :)

Putting my trust in God, I replied to Marco asking how this was going to be possible; after all, what was his interest as he didn’t know me?

The rest is history (email me to know followed after that), but I am proud to announce that through my blog site, the Lions Club of Limbe Malawi have benefited from Lions of Perugia, Italy with a grant of USD10,000 to support a project for blind and visually impaired children in in Phalombe, Malawi.


I came up with the idea that the project should take place in Phalombe. Lions Clubs are very strong supporters of VISION 2020 and the first phase of their projects concentrated on infrastructure development –which for Malawi resulted in Lions clubs building 4 Lions eye hospitals and donating them to the Government. I work at the biggest Lions SightFirst eye hospital in Malawi, which is located at Queen Elizabeth in Blantyre. The second phase of the Lions Project concentrated on supporting surgeries to reverse blindness from Trachoma and countries like Ethiopia have massively benefited from the Lions Fund.

Ironically, the VISION 2020 office is in London at the International Centre for Eye Health where I am based when I am in London. This is not the only reason I am a strong advocate of VISION 2020!

I am happy for now that through this VISION 2020 initiative and the partnership with Lions club, the poor blind and severely visually impaired children in Phalombe, Malawi will be helped. Meanwhile I continue exploring other avenues to promote VISION 2020 in Malawi.

Sorry I forgot! I am a Lion member myself even though I am not in the picture with the Lions of Limbe. Y can see me among the children in my red polo t-shirt. The Phalombe project is for 2010-2011.


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Khumbo Kalua