November 18, 1999
Contact: John Scarffe, KU Endowment, (785) 832-7336.
LAWRENCE -- The Kansas Lions Sight Foundation Inc. has given $16,000 for the Audio-Reader Network at the University of Kansas, bringing its total donation for the program to more than $250,000 since 1989.
The foundation gave the cash gift to the Kansas University Endowment Association to help with printing costs for the Audio-Reader Braille Program Guide. The gift also will help pay the monthly fees for the satellite time that allows Audio-Reader to be broadcast across Kansas and the nation.
"Without the Lions of Kansas, Audio-Reader would not be able to offer the high quality of services that it does to the blind, elderly and print-disabled," said Janet Campbell, director of the Audio-Reader Network. "In 1927, Helen Keller challenged the Lions to be Knights of the Blind, and the Lions of Kansas have answered her call."
The KU Audio-Reader service uses volunteers to read magazines, books and newspapers for broadcast over a special radio frequency. Audio-Reader is on the air 24 hours a day, seven days a week and broadcasts readings of about 100 newspapers and 50 magazines weekly to more than 7,000 blind and sight-impaired people in Kansas and Missouri. It also uses the Kansas Lions Sight Foundation Satellite Network to beam its broadcasts to a national network of reading services.
In addition to its donations to the Audio-Reader program, the Kansas Lions Sight Foundation Inc. has donated more than $2 million for research, treatment of eye diseases and education of ophthalmologists at the KU Medical Center.
The KU Endowment Association, an independent, nonprofit organization serving as the official fund-raising and fund-management foundation for the University of Kansas, will administer the gift. Founded in 1891, the KU Endowment Association is the oldest foundation of its kind at a public university in the United States and one of the largest.
Story by Leah Conger