Joining Peterborough Lions Club
(If you’re reading this but not local to Peterborough, by all means, get in touch anyway and we’ll help you find your nearest club. This also applies if you’re local to a Peterborough that isn’t ours, here in the UK!)
There are 48,000 Lions Clubs around the world, made up of 1.4m Lions in over 200 countries, of which 10,000 members are here in the British Isles.
You can find out more about the global organisation from the Lions Clubs International website, and about those closer to home on the British Isles website.
What to expect as a Peterborough Lion
Being a Lion is rewarding, even though you’ll never get paid for it. We are all volunteers giving up our time to support the community. Some of us are retired with more time on our hands, others are in full-time employment or raising families where time is a scarcer resource. But being a volunteer is, after all, voluntary, and how much time you can offer is up to you to decide (and may well vary over time).
Peterborough Lions Club meets monthly to discuss club business, usually on the second Tuesday evening of the month at The Grange (adjacent to Netherton Football Club). In the week prior to that, the club’s varied committees meet to discuss matters related to their individual remits – fundraising, welfare, social, etc, and provide reports back to the club’s business meeting. As a new member, you’d be invited to join one of these committees in order that you could contribute your own unique perspective, ideas and experience. We try to make the best use of people’s skills – so, for example, if you think this section could be better worded and you know how to use WordPress (or can learn) then maybe you’d be a good fit helping with club PR?
Of course, these meetings aren’t just for the sake of having meetings, and from them will flow events that will take up more of members time, depending on availability. This could be fundraising events (fetes, supporting Santa with his sleigh at Christmas, etc), or welfare or social events. Or it could be background tasks that sit behind a lot of what we do (preparing the next quiz sheet, perhaps). Some of them will be entirely social, but even those that don’t tend to involve working with friends to achieve a shared objective and they are often the most rewarding. And all of it remains voluntary: if something we do doesn’t suit you then you’re not obliged to take part (but please do help us arrange things that you’d want to be involved with!).
As well as volunteering some of your time, being a club member does come at a small financial cost. This allows Lions to ensure that club running costs do not come out of funds raised from the public, and it creates a strong incentive to ensure that costs are kept to a minimum. The annual fee for the Peterborough club (“dues”) at time of writing (August 2023) is £45/member (or £80/couple), and can be spread over the year – that’s under £4/month, which we hope is low enough that it doesn’t put anyone off joining.
How to join
Start by getting in touch, and we’ll talk you through the next steps. (You’ll be invited to a few club meetings to meet us and to help you decide if Lions is for you – if you haven’t been put off by the above then you’re sure to be a good fit!)
