My Life as a Lion

September has been mainly about club visits although I have done some activities with my club as well.

Before the rush

At club level I and five others attended Shirley Carnival, an annual event run by Shirley Lions Club and this year postponed to September because of bad weather earlier in the year. We were kept fully occupied face painting and running our roll-a-dice and pick-a-key games from 11:30 until 4:30 and raised around £196. The following week Lions had a street collection licence for the whole of the Solihull Borough and eight of us collected in Marston Green on Saturday morning raising £134.

In between I visited Sutton Coldfield and Erdington Lions Club as one of the official club visits I am doing. Sutton Coldfield and Erdington used to be two separate clubs both of which had dwindled in numbers so that, at the point of merging into one, they had only 4-6 members between them. Thanks to a lot of hard work by the members and by their guiding lions, Doug and Chris, they have grown to 12 members and have at least one more ready to join. The meeting was short and the club have plenty of ideas and planned activities.

During my club visits I am spreading the word on a number of themes. At the moment I am plugging our Autumn Forum, due to take place on the 14th October, and encouraging as many as possible to come along to take part in workshops on using the web and membership as well as presentations on PR and the Teenage Cancer Trust. I am also plugging a PR workshop that will take place on 25th November.

District Governor Paul’s theme for the year is “Touching the hearts of thos in need”. It’s aim is to encourage clubs back to their primary purpose, service. The message is that quality service provided coupled with some pride to shout about what we do will encourage new members to join allowing us to do even better service. As part of this theme I am reminding clubs about the Signature Projects and particularly pushing World Sight Day (11 October) and World Diabetes Day (14 November). I am also stressing to clubs the opportunities that the young leaders in service programme can offer a club  through encouraging young people to be service minded and potentially providing extra manpower for Lions’ projects.

This week I have visited two more clubs, Birmingham Moseley and Kings Heath Lion Club and Droitwich Lions Club. The meetings were very different but both clubs have activities planned and are very active clubs. I was particularly impressed with the way the Droitwich had embraced the use of email into their business process. All committee chairmen and club officers had circulated reports prior tothe meeting and only decision points and updates were discussed in the meeting. My own club has been trying to do the same but some officers still insist on going through the whole report in the business meeting.

I have one more visit to do this month before a couple of weeks holiday. When I return I am straight back into more visits, a charter dinner as guest of honour and Autumn Forum.

Lion Simon Moss

@simonhmoss @MarstonGnLions @lions105m @lionsclubsorg

1820 miles travelled as 2nd VDG

184 miles travelled as 1st VDG

580 hours since 1 July 2011 on Lions’ activities