JANUARY ISSUE
HAPPY NEW YEAR MD36 LIONS!!
Greetings Mighty MD36 Lions! Laura and I would like to wish you a most sincere Happy New Year and we hope you had a very merry and fun-filled Christmas with friends and family, smiling and laughing with you! We hope the coming year 2018 is filled with good things and happy times for you, your family and your Lions family!
As we enter this new year, we should all look ahead. We should reexamine the service projects and fundraisers we’ve been doing. Are they continuing to be successful? Are they sustainable? Are they having the impact we desire? While I’m quite certain that the vast (that means really big, had to look it up!) majority of our answers to these questions would be a solid YES, there are those that could use a boost in the “profit” side of the “profit/loss” statement. From time to time I talk to Lions who are still doing fundraisers that just don’t pencil out and the members of their clubs are bringing in less and less money per Lion-hour invested.
As the new year begins, we should take a good look to be certain that we get the biggest bang for our Lion buck that we can! That could involve … CHANGE. What? Did he say CHANGE? Well, yes. Sometimes change is just the thing we need.
Now that I’ve discussed the harsh business of looking at our activities and our budgets, let me say this … YOU’VE BEEN CHALLENGED!!! January is the Lions month for food collections to help “Fight Hunger”. The week of January 8-14, 2018, is the Lions International Week of Service to Fight Hunger. A few weeks ago, representing my Lions Club, I visited the Beaverton Lions Club and, for the 3rd year in a row, challenged them to our annual “Triple Play Food Drive” (also known as the Tualatin-Beaverton Food Fight!) where we collect food for the Oregon Food Bank on the Saturday of the Week of Service. Lion President Larry Lidberg jumped at the challenge, then shouted: “How about the whole District?” and I shouted back: “how about the whole Multiple District?”. You should have seen the smile on my old friend’s face!
So, Mighty MD36 Lions, here’s the challenge: During the month of January, 2018, hold a non-perishable food drive to benefit a local food bank, homeless shelter or other community resource that will equitably distribute the food you’ve collected. Report your collected food weight, (estimate, if your community resource doesn’t have a scale), on the www.lionsclubs.org at the MyLCI tab. If we all collect 15, yes, that’s fifteen tons of food (“Ya load 15 tons, whaada ya get? …”), well, I’ll come up with something great for Multiple District Convention!
Your outstanding District Governors are still out there working so very hard for you! We met on December 2nd in beautiful Roseburg, got some business done and enjoyed each other’s company in a lovely setting (much thanks to Roseburg Lions President Jane Thomas!). As they continue to visit your clubs, enjoy their company, support them and we’ll all have another wildly successful year!
As the calendar turns to the new year, let’s redouble our efforts to provide service to our communities, leadership to our communities and clubs, communication (use that great MD36 PR manual) about all the amazing things we do while enjoying one another’s company in everything we do! Bring your friends!!