By Andrew Ayala
Staff Writer
The East Los Angeles College Student Health Center held a free vision screening and gave out eye glasses to students Thursday in F5-209.
The event was organized by the Student Health Center and a partner organization called Strong Villages. This organization holds vision screenings in multiple countries throughout the world.
“We love ELAC. Everyone here is great and we even have volunteers from ELAC helping out as much as they can,” said Lynn Bealer Co-Founder of Strong Villages.
The screening consists of four steps in which students both get their eyes checked and can get a pair of eyeglasses or lenses for free.
“This is the fourth or fifth time time ELAC has offered this since May of 2018. If you can’t see how can you study? Students are already dealing with a number of challenges and we don’t want vision to be another one,” said Cecilia Cruz, Student Health Center coordinator.
The event tries to serve between 75 to 80 students and recommends them to get there as early as possible due to time restrictions and limited space. This time around, they had a total of 95 people who were able to sign up.
The people giving the screenings are second-year optometry students and doctors from Western University.
“This helps the students at this college and it is also good experience for our students as well. It also assists those who don’t have access to eye care, get some sort of eye care. It is not a full examination, but it is still something,” said Dr. Philip Kwok from Western University.
“Since I’m paying the health fee, I might as well use the services that the school offers,” said ELAC student Paul Rodriguez.
The next vision screening will be held sometime next month.