Lions Club Members Convene for a Weekend of Brainstorming, Networking, and Learning

lecture_workshopping.jpgLions Club conference lecture. Via the Kodiak Lions Club

Kayla Desroches/KMXT

Lions Clubs International is a world-wide organization dedicated to providing community service in different communities, from delivering glasses to in-need individuals to fundraising for disaster relief. However, Lions Clubs cast a wide net – different branches serve the needs that arise within their communities.

They also get a chance to hear from elected Lions members like International Director Karla Harris, who flew up from South Milwaukee, Wisconsin for the occasion. She’s one of the 34 Lions Club members from around the world who sit on the group’s Board of Directors.

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Harris says small town community service groups like the Kodiak Lions Club provide valuable local service.

“It’s one thing to send a check for an activity maybe doing measles shots in Africa. That’s wonderful and it’s so important, but I think doing things right here in Kodiak is key. If you have people who need hats and clubs in winter who can’t afford to buy them – making them and giving them to people. That’s what counts. Doing local things makes a difference.”

Harris says the opportunity to help your neighbor gives community members a reason to join Lions Club.

Recruitment is one of the factors that is important to international director Lewis Quinn, who is based in Anchorage. He says membership is dwindling and one of his reasons for becoming an international director was so that he could help promote the group and rebuild representation.

“The culture in North America after World War II, we were a society of givers, we had a lot of wealth, we were trying to give back to the community, you know part of our towns, bringing up our kids in a different way. It was a society of us. And nowadays, as we’ve migrated with different generations and the culture in the Western civilization, we’ve become a society of me.”
Quinn says Lions Club numbers have been shrinking since the ‘60s and there hasn’t been any growth since the ‘90s, and says the group is working towards being an organization of “we” again.

He says to reach that goal they need all types of volunteers, like episodic members who rally around a common cause, but who don’t meet on a weekly basis.

“For example, the Bethel Winter House was probably one of my favorite projects in Alaska. That’s an episodic club that was designed around members that had the same vision of helping the homeless in the winter in Bethel, Alaska, so they came together to create a club that helps the homeless in the winter. They don’t do anything in the summer right yet. They may, but right now they don’t. But they come together in the winter just to help the people that need to be helped through the winter.”

Quinn says those are the kind of clubs he thinks people will migrate to.

While Lions Clubs International may not be as large as it was after WWII, it still has more than a million members in 195 countries. Around Kodiak, you’ll be able to identify some of those volunteers by their shiny yellow vests trimmed with blue.

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