Get Ready for the Holidays

“November Newsletter”

As we watch the last of the fall foliage turn color and blow away, we are reminded that one of the busiest times of year is approaching rapidly and we’d better be ready because it won’t wait until we’re ready!  Our spring and summer have been beautiful.  The extra days of warmth and sunshine just help us realize that we live in a beautiful part of the country!

Most of you are hard at work in preparation for your club Holiday Projects.  Collecting food for baskets, surprises and gifts for visits from Santa and/or Breakfast with Santa, providing shoes and socks or warm coats are all projects that will start this month so they will be complete before the holiday crunch catches up.  As you work on these plans, please keep a photo record for your “Club Story Board”.  If you have not heard of this concept, please contact your District Governor for details.  This is a state-wide competition between all of the clubs in your district that will send the winner on to the state competition.  I’m looking forward to seeing what great things are being done by the Lions of MD 36.

We are experiencing consistent membership growth as new Lions Clubs are being formed.  With the addition of these new clubs, we still need to invite new, prospective members to our clubs.  If each of us would “Ask 1” until we find those new members for our clubs, think about how many more hands you would have for providing service in your community.

Through the Oregon Lions Sight & Hearing Foundation and local volunteers, the Lions of MD 36 are on the fast track to screen 114,000 children for vision.  Please help them when the screening is in your area school.  It makes the whole process go faster and smoother when there are enough volunteers and it helps your local club to show the community one of the things that Lions do.  After the screening is complete, be sure to have your club secretary report the information to Lions Clubs International.  These vision screenings are part of the LCI “Centennial Service Challenge” and they want to know how many children are being screened.  This is a project that we do so well in MD 36.  We need to let the world know of our success!

The second Council of Governors meeting will be held on Saturday, November 15th in Springfield at the Justice Center.  While this meeting is share reports and ideas of the Governors and Multiple District Committee Chairs, all Council meetings are open to all Lions.  If you are in the area and want to drop in for a visit, please do so.  We start at 1:30 pm.

From The Anderson’s:  Have a Happy and Safe Thanksgiving! 

Can You Believe It?

“October Newsletter”

Can you believe it!  One- fourth of the Lions year is already complete. Are you and your Lions club on target to reach your goals?  Do you need some assistance to help reach those goals?  There are Lions that you could call for some help.  Maybe there is a Past District Governor, a Zone Chair or a Vice District Governor who would visit your club.  These Lions might look at your club from a different angle and be able to make suggestions that no one in your club has thought of in the past.

Now is a great time to start planning for your holiday activities.  A project that involves your club with members of your community is a great way for your neighbors to find out what Lions do.  We help with so many needs in the community but we don’t tell anyone about our successes.  Make sure that you let the local media: newspaper, TV and radio know what you have done or, better yet, ask them to help you advertise your event.  Sometime this month, we should have totals on our success with “Cans for a Cause”.  The funds will have been distributed to the various Honor Flight Hubs and we will know how many WWII Veterans were given the opportunity to make the trip to Washington, DC.  What a terrific opportunity this has been for the Lions of Oregon.  It gave us an opportunity to partner with other organizations and to provide the trip that many of these Vets would not have been able to make.

I hope that you plan to help celebrate Lions World Sight Day on October 10th.  That would be a great day to continue with one of our Statewide Service Projects: Eyeglass Collection.  There is always a need for more eyeglasses that can be sent to places that have no means of getting glasses.  Although we can’t always put used eyeglasses to work here at home,  we can help people in other countries while at the same time making use of glasses that are no longer needed by the person that made the donation.

Please welcome the members of our newest Lions Club in MD 36, the Southern Oregon Drifting Lions Club in Medford.  What an exciting day we spent on August 31th at their Charter Party.  It was a great day of fun, food, excitement and fellowship.  This Club chartered with 23 members, but they added five more members during the day.  For me, it was really exciting.  I had the opportunity of taking a couple of rides around the track!  For someone who is known to have a “lead foot”, I realized that these folks have terrific skill.  They can drive their car fast, shift from gear to gear and use their hand brake all at the same time.  It’s not something that can easily be done especially after having had knee surgery.  It was really exciting to be on the track with these great drivers but even more exciting to see that we now have 28 more Lions to help provide service to those in need.

We wish these Lions and their sponsoring Club, the Grants Pass Redwood Lions Club, “the best of luck.”

Will your club take the challenge from our International President Joe Preston and “Just Ask”?  We can make this a terrific year! 

If you see a bit of a deeper tan on some Lions of MD 36, it might be that they were some of the 17 Lions who travelled to San Juan, Puerto Rico to attend the 38th Annual USA/Canada Lions Leadership Forum.  The weather was great; the scenery was beautiful and the Convention Center was terrific.  With so many great training sessions to choose from, it was easy to find topics that were useful, educational and presented with enthusiasm.  

The Planning Committee spent many hours in preparation for 1,600 Lions to travel so many miles from home and still make the most of the time spent in these meetings.  We learned first hand about President Preston’s “Centennial Service Challenge”, what needs to be done to create a “Blueprint” to build a stronger club and more information on Lions University.

In the next issue of the Oregon Lion, there will be more information on some of these items and a summary of the plans for the Lions of MD 36 as we prepare for the future and for hosting the 2017 USA/Canada Lions Leadership Forum.

There are many exciting things to plan.  Stay tuned to see how you can be involved! 

Jump into Fall

        Wow, what a summer this has been!  Just like most summers, there are so many activities around our Multiple District.  The parades, picnics, fairs, community celebrations, garage sales, barbeques, vision screenings at local libraries around the state, family gatherings and Club socials are just some of the activities that our Lions family has participated in.  I hope that you had a great summer and managed to stay cool in the beautiful weather that we have had.  But now it’s time to get down to work.

       It’s time to “Spark” new enthusiasm in our clubs and the projects that we have going in our areas and Districts.  Each of our Districts has held its first Cabinet meeting and the Council of Governors has also met for the first time this year.  Another first, our COG meeting was held in Dorris, CA, in their new Community Center.  It is beautiful and the Dorris Lions are terrific hosts!  What a great group of leaders we have in our Multiple District.  They are ready to get going!  As schools open for the new year, this would be a great time to find out how your club could be of help to the school or to individual teachers. Remember, most of these schools will be screening their children for at least vision needs this year and many of those screenings will be done through the Oregon Lions Sight & Hearing Foundation’s screening program.  It would be great if your Lions club was visible in the school on the day of the screening.

       September is Eyeglasses Collection Month.  Why not plan and advertise a date and place where you will collect used eyeglasses in your community?  Be sure to report the number of glasses that are collected to your District representative.  We would like to start keeping more accurate records of the work we are doing with our various statewide projects.  If we don’t know the numbers, we can’t do a very accurate job of bragging about our work.  

       The new Multiple District directory is out and full of valuable information.  Each Club President and Secretary has a copy.  Please contact Glynis at the headquarters office if you find changes that need to be made.  Sometimes things change from the time the information was sent in by your Governor until the book gets printed.  It’s easy to just send a quick email to: md36lions@comcast.net and let Glynis know the change.
       Please share your Club and District information with all of us in the Multiple District.  I would like to visit your area, if the schedule will allow, so keep me posted!

       You will hear more about the “Spark the Pride” program in future issues of The Oregon Lion magazine.
                                      Dist. Representatives for Statewide Projects:
District O – 1st VDG Garry Charbonneau - gmcharbonneau@gmail.com; District R – PDG Cy Kauffman – jckauffman@aol.com; District E – 1st VDG Wes King – wgking71@hotmail.com ; District G – Debi Castor – castor3324@gmail.com.

“Spark the Pride”

          As we start this new Lions year, I would like to thank the Lions in MD 36 who have agreed to become part of the team that leads us into the future.  Also a great big Thank You to Past Council Chair Steve Thomson and the 2013-14 Council of Governors for all of their hard work during this past year.

          In three short years, Lions Clubs International will celebrate 100 years of service.  What will the next 100 years bring?  Will we continue to be the largest service organization in the world?  The decisions we make now will have a great impact on that future.

          Our new International President Joe Preston from Prescott, Arizona, has chosen “Strengthen the Pride” as his theme for the year.  He has a four-part program that you will be hearing about as our District Governors make visits to your clubs.  Many of his plans are in preparation for the 100 Year Celebration.

          In our Multiple District, I have chosen the theme of “Spark the Pride” for this coming year.  My plan is to find ways that we can “spark” our clubs to be better than ever, to “spark” our members to take pride in what they do every day in their communities, to “spark” our enthusiasm as we work together so that others will want to become a member of our clubs in order to enjoy the same benefits that we enjoy and to “spark” our interest to work with more children and youth in our community.

          As many of you know, I have a great love for auto racing and, in the past, we actually held a race at the District O Convention when I was District Governor and I plan a repeat of that type of program in May at our Multiple District Convention.  You will be hearing more about this “Spark Program” in the next few weeks. Stay tuned for more information.

          Although there were a limited number of Lions from MD 36 in attendance in Toronto, Canada, at the International Convention, all of us had a great time and we heard of the many projects Lions of the world do every day to provide service to those in need.  We were entertained by terrific talents, many of them with sight and/or hearing loss.  These entertainers gave us great examples of what hard work and perseverance can achieve.

          Lastly, I would like to remind you of the “Opt Out” to The Oregon Lion that is in this issue of the magazine.  You will be able to read each issue on the MD 36 website, www.md36lionsclubs.org.

          Let’s keep that spark going!

Council of Governors meetings this year:

August 16 – Dorris, CA Butte Valley Community Center
November 15 – Springfield Justice Center
March 6, 2015 – Pendleton
May 21, 2015 - Seaside