Saturday 12 June 2021 has been designated ‘LCIF Day in Europe’. The objectives of this day are to promote Lion’s global impact, engage with non-Lions and to raise funds for LCIF. This article provides some history and achievements of LCIF.

Lions Clubs International (LCI) was formed in 1917 in the USA and is now the world’s largest service organisation with over 1.35 million members in 206 countries with over 45000 clubs. Yeo Valley Lions Club is part of LCI and was formed in 1968 with a group of men and women who work together to accomplish things for our community which as individuals would be difficult to achieve. The Lions motto is “We Serve” and our members share a desire to serve those in need in our area and further afield.

Also in 1968 the Lions Clubs International Foundation (LCIF) was created to assist local Lions clubs involved in global and large scale humanitarian projects. The mission statement of LCIF is “to support the efforts of Lions clubs and partners in serving communities locally and internationally, giving hope and impacting lives through humanitarian service projects and grants”. Since its formation LCIF has awarded over $1 billion in over 13,000 grants. The focus areas are vision, hunger, childhood cancer, diabetes, humanitarian needs, youth, environment and disaster relief.

As a background to this work, the following worldwide information might concentrate the mind:

Vision - 253 million individuals are blind or visually impaired; The LCIF SightFirst Programme has provided over 9 million cataract surgeries, over 270 million treatments for river blindness and trained over 3 million associated health workers.

Hunger - 800 million people end the day hungry; By expanding resources and improving infrastructure to address food shortages around the globe, the aim is a world in which no one goes hungry.

Childhood Cancer - A child is diagnosed with cancer every 2 minutes;The challenge is to strengthen medical and social services designed to increase life expectancy of children with cancer and enhance the quality of life for them and their families.

Natural Disasters – each year our planet experiences an increase in natural disasters; Provision can be made for help to natural disaster-afflicted communities by disaster relief grants. These grants can meet the immediate requirements of food, water, shelter, clothing and medical supplies as well as longer term assistance for infrastructure reconstruction.

Humanitarian Programmes - 245 people per day die of measles; 400 million people have diabetes; Millions of people of all ages and abilities are helped to gain access to education, technology, healthcare and other life changing improvements. This includes support for the treatment and eradication of measles and diabetes

Youth Programmes of social and emotional learning have been delivered by trained educators through the Lions Quest Programme benefitting more than 16 million youth in over 100 countries.

LCIF is funded entirely by charitable donations from Lions Clubs, individual donors, friends and partners. !00% of donations raised is used for community based service efforts and the grants are managed by Lions Clubs and members in the local areas.

Yeo Valley Lions Club is a regular contributor to LCIF and the most recent donation was to a combined UK Lions Club effort to fund a surgical training programme at the LCIF Eye Centre at Korle Bu in Kenya. The Eye Centre itself was funded by LCIF with contributions from Moorfields Hospital Charity and UK Lions Clubs.

Our South West region has benefitted from LCIF grants in the past, with assistance for the flooding of the Somerset Levels, Childrens Hospice South West and equipment for the Cornwall Air Ambulance.