10 Apr 2017

International President of Lions Club, Chancellor Bob Corlew is in Botswana to see what Lions Club Botswana engages in.

Speaking in a press conference recently, Mr Corlew said he chose to visit Lions Clubs worldwide in celebration of 100 years of service.

Mr Corlew pointed out that Lions is an organisation focusing on humanitarian services, further adding that they were working to make communities better.

He pointed out that Lions Club responded to community’s needs and were collectively involved in a massively diverse range of projects and activities.

He said they existed to find the needs that existed in communities and helped them as per the need.

He mentioned that local lions included people who lived in the community, who knew their community’s needs, saying they made decisions about community projects from the community’s grassroots to assist otherwise.

He stated that Lions’ projects tended to be hands on and they actively worked alongside organisations that they support.

Mr Corlew said hunger was one major campaign they had in Africa, adding that they preached better agricultural practices so that people would not starve.

He mentioned that in Botswana they had a flood district funds.

“A global emergency grant of $10 000 has been directed to flooding in Botswana,” he stated.

Meanwhile Mr Corlew mentioned that Lions Clubs International Foundation had committed to raising $30 million for vaccinations in the health sector by 2017.

He said the partnership focused on support of routine immunisation and strengthening health systems to help prevent serious outbreaks of disease, mentioning the immunisation against measles and rubella.

He also mentioned that Lions were known as ‘knights of the blind’, focusing on programmes and services for the blind and visually impaired.

He said their aim was to eliminate preventable and reversible blindness.

Other community health programmes and projects that Lions Club participated in were to support local and large-scale global health programmes to control and prevent diabetes and diabetic retinopathy, which he stated was the leading cause of vision loss in adults of working age in industrialised countries.

Meanwhile, Mr Corlew unveiled a sketch for Lotoreng School in the Mahalapye Sub-district. 

He said the local club was touched by the fact that the children of Letoreng, walked 16 kilometres to school on daily basis and were to build a legacy project to save children from walking long distance to the school in the next village.

The local club saw a need to build a two-classroom block to the tune of P1.4 million. ENDS