Henley Lions Club

EXCELLENT news to start the new year.

At this month’s meeting we inducted a new member, Georgie Gibson, into Henley Lions Club.

Georgie has attended a number of meetings and has seen that the work we do and the help we give to others is so interesting and worthwhile. Another prospective member has decided that he wishes to be “badged up” into the club in the coming months and yet another person is interested in becoming a member and will join us at our monthly meetings to learn more of how we work to assist others.

If this all seems a bit serious, please be assured that we do have fun and we do all have a sense of humour.

We would like to thank Toad Hall garden centre for again allowing Henley Lions to place our charity collection buckets in their wonderful Christmas walk- through, so beautifully decorated by the ever helpful staff.

The amount raised was almost £300 and this will be used for the benefit of local children’s charities.

Thank you to all who supported us.

Santa’s sleigh, which wound its musical way around the town and also Shiplake in the run-up to Christmas, received £6,648 from well-wishers along the sometimes very wet and cold journeys.

This delighted so many children (of all ages) and was a record amount for this event. Congratulations to Lion Pam Phillips for organising the event, even though she was somewhat under the weather herself.

Club members will be having a slightly belated New Year dinner at the Cherry Tree Inn to celebrate these events that have raised such a good sum for local and other causes.

Lions International is the largest service organisation in the world with more than 1.4 million members in 48,000 clubs in more than 200 countries and geographic areas and together awarded $5,478,475 in grants in 2023. Every donation you make to us makes such a difference to so many people.

We will shortly be offering a series of children’s books on environmental issues to primary schools and, with the headteachers’ approval, will donate a set to each school.

We hope that these will be interesting, useful, stimulating and fun.

If you would like to know more about Henley Lions Club, you are welcome to join us on the first Monday of the month at King’s Arms Barn (by the smaller section of the Waitrose car park) at 7.30pm.

For more information, visit www.henleylions.org.uk

John Moore, president