A History of the Club
Lions International is a worldwide organisation with more than one million members, united in their aims under the motto “We serve”. The Galway Lions Club was formed 40 years ago, and since then has been a very active group in helping the less fortunate members of our community. Essentially, what members do is very good work, and they enjoy doing it, but none of it would have been possible without the remarkably generous support of the general public.
Our activities fall under two headings, service and fundraising. Some of the service projects over the years include bringing 50 elderly men and women from Galway each year to Trabolgan for a week’s holiday as guests of the club, accompanied by a nurse and volunteer Lions to make sure they fully enjoyed themselves. For a number of years, thanks to the local Health Service, Lions were involved in timber cutting and delivering many tons of chopped wood to the Vincent de Paul Society.
Christmas is a particularly busy time when the members do Santa Claus parties for various groups, young and old. The annual food appeal helps some 500 families, and they distribute toys to many needy children. As part of this project, soft toys are raffled by pubs and retailers, there are supermarket cash collections, and some 250 donated items are auctioned every year by Keith Finnegan on Galway Bay FM. The Galway club produced a talking newspaper for blind people all over the country for many years, a mixture of interviews, music, poetry, and tips and advice for entitlements for the blind. The Lions organise an annual youth award, various alcohol awareness and suicide awareness programmes, and visitations to the elderly. They have planted trees in Merlin Park, provided seating in South Park and Salthill, and for a number of years engaged in the canal clean-up campaign in addition to other environmental projects.
Imagination and excitement are two ingredients the Lions use in fundraising. The Big Push was a project where members of the Irish Wheelchair Association were pushed by volunteers from Eyre Square to Blackrock and back again, accompanied by a small army of collectors and St Patrick’s Brass Band. This helped to highlight the difficulties experienced by people in wheelchairs while funding the purchase of a number of specially adapted buses for use by the IWA.
The club runs a radio auction annually and it is our biggest fundraiser in December when over €30,000 is raised.has organised a number of balloon races where balloons were filled with helium and tagged with the sponsor’s name. Balloons were returned from as far away as Czechoslovakia, and Treviso in Italy. We have held race nights, antique auctions, fashion shows, paraplegic games, concerts, golf competitions, etc, with all of the money collected going to local causes.
Please take a minute to look at the projects in which we are involved . Summaries of the work we do are located at the side of the page.
We are proud of the fact that the administration of all club projects is funded by membership fees.
The video below gives you some idea of the range of work being carried out by the Lions Clubs all over the world.
The Video is entitled: Lions: making a difference everyday ,everywhere…..