My Life as a Lion

And so the days have flown past again and the blog has lain untouched. I keep meaning to write something but I never seem to get around to it. At last I’ve found myself with a couple of hours and the will to write something so here goes.

At the end of my last post I promised to let you know how the MD convention went and I have to say that it went very well. On the Friday Night 440 Lions from around the UK and Ireland enjoyed good food, a wonderful demonstration by Special Olympics GB and an excellent disco. As this was my part of the weekend I was very relieved but inspired at the same time.

On the Saturday it was down to business and for once the debate was lively with the main focus being the finances of Lions in this country. As I have mentioned before, the administration of Lions Cubs International at all levels is paid for by members’ subscriptions. With a, temporarily, declining membership striking the balance between supporting all Lions activities and keeping subscriptions down is an unenviable task. This year the Council of Governors have made the decision to suspend a couple of youth activities, Youth Football and the Music competition, unless alternative sources of funding can be found. These decisions had to be ratified by convention and eventually were, the search for sponsorship will continue however.

Saturday night was the more formal banquet and ball with 600+ in attendance. The food was again excellent as was the entertainment, the Joe Loss Orchestra, although not my cup of tea.

The last morning of convention, Sunday, features the international guest of honour, in this case Past International President Al Brandel an ex New York detective who was the head of Lions Clubs International 2008-9. He spoke very well about the challenges facing Lions and of the great achievements that we should celebrate.

Sunday is also the day when next year’s Council of Governors is introduced to each DG elect’s choice of music and confetti cannons galore. We also had presentations from the organising committees for MD convention on Torquay, where I will be one of those being introduced, and for International Convention in Hamburg where I will be inaugurated as DG and join with 30000 other Lions from around the world. This brought home how close it is and I’ll confess to a shiver of excitement.

Since Convention I have been at the last Long Range Planning and Finance & Admin committees of the Lions’ year and attended the charter anniversaries of Wellesbourne and Coventry Godiva Lions Clubs, the latter as one of the guests of honour. The last three weekends, however, have been spent at training sessions for club officers, zone and region chairmen and other district officers. These were very good sessions run by the district’s training team and it was just a shame that they were not better attended. Nevertheless for thos who were there I am sure that they will be better officers for it.

I‘m going to leave it there and hopefully come back sooner next time.

Lion Simon Moss

@simonhmoss @MarstonGnLions @lions105m @lionsclubsorg

1680 miles travelled so far as 2nd VDG

450 hours since 1 July 2011 on Lions’ activities