Festive Lion hearts
For decades around December in Australia, families have loved sharing the famously tasty Lions Christmas Cake at their festive table, but there is so much more to this group’s Christmas cheer.
Each of the local Lions clubs in City of Logan has volunteer members organising a host of fundraisers and giving their time to community activities to make people’s lives that little bit brighter.
Rochedale Springwood Lions Club members have been busy preparing for their festive season, with club secretary Chris Richardson explaining how rewarding it is for he and his fellow members to be ‘putting something back into the community’.
A member for 22 years, Chris says the local club’s 19 members all find ‘a lot of satisfaction in working to help people’ and are always happy for members to join them.
‘We all like to contribute, and there’s around 40,000 of us in Australia and 1.4 million members around the world with Lions International,’ Chris says.
‘We are always very busy leading up to Christmas, with selling our famous Christmas cakes of course, which are made in Melbourne with 50 percent fruit, and playing Santa’s helpers by sorting through letters from local kids at 6 schools around the area.
‘The Year 1 children write a letter to Santa and we all gather around the table at our club president’s home and help send on Santa’s reply with glitter in the envelope and their names.
‘Some of the teachers put the envelopes in the freezer so the children know it’s come from the North Pole,’ he laughs.
As well as put a spark in Christmas for the very young, the club also sends merry wishes to the elderly through packing individual Christmas treat boxes of Lions Cake and chocolates for recipients of Meals on Wheels in the local area, delivered through the Logan East Community Neighbourhood Association.
Christmas shoppers out and about in Logan can also catch the club selling tickets for its annual Christmas trailer raffle – the $7,000 prize is a huge array of toys, household goods and presents for all the family inside a new box trailer.
‘We sold 10,000 tickets last year at $2 each and raised $20,000, so this year we should be busy at our locations including Bunnings Underwood from 10 December until it is drawn on 22 December.’
These are Bunnings Underwood from 10 to 14 December, and Springwood Mall from 17 to 22 December, when the raffle is drawn.
Chris and his fellow club volunteers will also be spreading cheer at Springwood Mall with gift wrapping for a coin donation to raise funds for local charities.
‘Every year our local club tries to donate $40,000 we have raised from our events,’ Chris says.
The club’s list of charities reveals the huge hearts these local Lions really have.
They include the Australian Lions Medical Research Fun, the Australian Lions Foundation for Disaster Relief, school bursaries for local high school students, gift vouchers for local children to help with school books, Story Dogs for children learning to read at St Peter’s Catholic Primary School Rochedale, the Australian Lions Children’s Cancer Research Foundation, and paying for accommodation and meals for at-risk children attending a youth program at Camp Duckadang west of the Sunshine Coast.
For more information, visit the Rochedale Springwood Lions Facebook.
Photo at top: Rochedale Springwood Lions volunteers Maree Ramsay, 2nd Vice President, and Peter Duffy enjoy sorting Santa letters for local children. Photo: Josh Woning.
