Into Stone is happy to provide this listing free of charge.

Stone Lions Club
18th July 2007

The Club is continuing to flourish and over the last twelve months has been successful in recruiting a number of new members.

We now have over 20 active members, among these are a number of couples who have joined the ranks since our first Lady joined us some time back.

The Lions have been involved in a number of very successful fundraising events recently, and we have just been involved with the organisation and help with the running of the Stone Festival.

We have helped various causes in and around Stone during the last twelve months and our involvement continues with our mobility scheme with a number of our local residents taking advantage of our scooter loan system.

It gives a great deal of pleasure to see how the scooters help to bring some mobility back into people’s lives.
The one member that we have to thank for all the hard work he puts in regarding this side of club is Lion Mike Ward who has been in the club since it started in Stone 29 years ago.

The Club has changed its meeting place on a number of occasions in the last few years, but they are now happy to say that they are settled in at the St Dominic’s Social Club in Station Road Stone.

The business meetings take place on the second Wednesday of each month commencing at 8.00pm and we enjoy social meetings on the fourth Wednesday of the month.

We are still looking out for new members, so if you feel you are the sort of person who would like to give something back to the local community while meeting new friends and of course enjoying yourself at the same time.
Please contact one of the following.

Officers for 2007/08

Lion President Dave Handley : 01785 812027
Lion Secretary Mike Ward : 01785 814573
Public Relations Mike Potter : 01785 816945

International Lions History

The International Association of Lions Clubs was created in 1917 by a Chicago businessman named Melvin Jones. The International Association of Lions Clubs is today the largest service organisation in the world with over 1,4 million members in more than 44,000 clubs in 701 Districts covering 178 countries and geographic areas. Lions Clubs are not social clubs, although there are social benefits to membership. Lions Club members give their time, skills and resources to raise funds for charitable giving both in their communities and internationally. The major focus of Lions fund raising activities is sight conservation, although other projects are pursued such as drug awareness programs in high schools, diabetes awareness programs and other programs that are specific to individual Clubs and Districts. Lions took up sight conservation as their major goal after a speech given by Helen Keller at the Lions International Convention held at Cedar Point, Ohio, in 1925. At that time, Helen Keller challenged the Lions to become "Knights of the Blind", a challenge that has become a rallying cry for Lions projects around the world.

Lions work in the area of sight conservation is carried out at many levels. Individual Clubs sponsor free eye screening programs using mobile eye clinics. In many countries, Clubs sponsor eye surgery camps where cataract surgeries are performed at no charge for those that can't afford this medical care. Many clubs collect old eyeglasses for distribution to the needy in other countries.

The International Association of Lions Clubs is the largest non-governmental organisation associated with the United Nations and was called upon by the United Nations and the World Health Organisation to raise funds for an international program of sight conservation. It has been estimated that 40 million cases of curable and preventable blindness exist on this planet today. Without intervention, this is projected to become 80 million by the end of the decade. The International Association of Lions Clubs began a program of fund raising that they called "Campaign Sight First" in order to cure/prevent 40 million cases of blindness worldwide. Over $148,600,000 have been raised by Lions all over the world for this program. Eye hospitals are being built in the places that most need them. In India alone, over 300,000 cataract surgeries have been performed and that number is rapidly growing. Lions services to humanity range from purchasing eyeglass for a child whose parents can't afford them to multimillion-dollar programs to cure blindness on a worldwide scale.