Peterborough Lions

Santa and his helpers will be out at various supermarkets during the build up to Christmas.

Members of Peterborough Lions will be busy helping out and would all love to see you.

Here are the dates and venues:

December    2014

Friday                    5th         Lions Carol Float – Tesco Werrington 6pm  – 9pm

Saturday              6th         Lions Carol Float – Tesco Werrington 9am – 5pm

Sunday                 7th         Lions Carol Float – Sainsburys Bretton 10am – 4pm

Saturday              13th       Lions Carol Float – Morrisons Lincoln Road 9am – 5pm

Sunday                 14th       Lions Carol Float – Morrisons Lincoln Road 10am – 4pm

Friday                    19th       Lions Carol Float – Morrisons Stanground 6pm  – 9pm

Saturday              20th       Lions Carol Float – Morrisons Stanground 9am – 5pm

Sunday                 21st        Lions Carol Float – Sainsburys Bretton 10am – 4pm

We would like to wish you all a very Happy Christmas and a Happy New Year.  Thank you for all your support during 2014.

One of our club members Robert Mapletoft is on his way to reaching 100 blood donations this year.  His dedication to attending blood donor sessions over many years will be recognised with a certificate when he reaches the grand total of 100.

This achievement is something which Robert is obviously proud to have fulfilled.

His generous donations will have helped many people in various walks of life over the years.

As a club we would all like to congratulate him!

Signature are an organisation that promote excellence in communication with deaf people, and we are incredibly proud and pleased to report that Peterborough Lions John & Sheila Cheetham received the Community Spirit 2014 award.

Thank you to all those who voted. More information about the awards can be found on the Signature Annual Awards website.

The Signature Annual Awards, a national charity, honour the ground-breaking work that is being carried out across the UK and Ireland to improve access for deaf and deafblind people.

The awards ceremony will take place on 10 October at Durham Cathedral. Voting for this outstanding couple is open until 2 October 2014 at 12 noon via the Signature Annual Awards website http://signatureannualawards.org.uk/you-decide

John Cheetham, a life member of Peterborough Lions Club and his wife Sheila who is also a Lion, have been successful in being short-listed for the UK and Ireland Community Spirit Award. They were nominated by the teachers of deaf children at Jack Hunt School. Sheila and John have made a positive impact across the deaf community for more than three decades. Their tireless dedication to removing barriers and developing awareness has had a huge impact on the lives of deaf children and young people and their families locally, nationally and internationally.

Sheila has been deaf for 30 years, she lost the hearing in one ear when she was a child, but was not diagnosed until her teenage years. She has used her own experience to support others both personally and through raising funds for charity. Her attitude and commitment has inspired her husband John to equally devote his time and efforts to improving the lives of deaf people and their families. They have raised hundreds of thousands of pounds for charities such as Hearing Dogs for Deaf People and Peterborough and District Deaf Children’s society (PDDCS). They also devised the highly successful and popular annual Peterborough Lions Quiz.

Sheila and John recognise the importance of not only supporting deaf people but of supporting their families too. They have helped many families adjust to the challenges of raising a child with a hearing loss. They are active supporters of PDDCS, of which John has been president for over 25 years. More recently Sheila and John saw the successful conclusion to a campaign to bring Music and the Deaf to the local area. John has covered hundreds of miles in the Lions minibus to enable children to pursue and develop their musical talents. They have access to one to one tuition, play in an orchestra and recently met Evelyn Glennie. In 2013 Music and the Deaf was the nominated charity of the Peterborough Lions.

Together, Sheila and John have delivered training in Deaf Awareness and face reading to organisations nationwide in their role as Speech and Hearing Officers for the Lions Club International. They also created the “I see what you’re saying” badge. Now retired from work, Sheila and John continue their hard work to promote a positive attitude towards deafness. With their warm personalities they make others feel that anything is possible.

September is here, which can only mean one thing: 2014’s Peterborough Lions Quiz is here!

As usual you’ll be able to pick up a copy from one of several local shops and charities (if you’d like to support us by selling the quiz please get in touch), or directly from us in person at one of several locations throughout the city over the next couple of months – check out our diary for locations and dates. You can also buy them online (£1 postage charge applies no matter how many you buy, and we still have some of last year’s available if you missed it).

This year the theme is “Equine Antics (a saddlebag of horsey questions)”, so if you know your Shetland ponies from your shire horses you should have an advantage – but if you don’t, not to worry because the connection to horses is pretty loose, and as usual it’s all a bit of fun (horseplay?). The price is unchanged from the last couple of years at £1.50, and you can win prizes of up to £100!

For those of us who have been around a while this might not come as a surprise, but can you believe that the Peterborough Lions Quiz has been going for 25 years? That makes this our silver jubilee!

The quiz was devised by Peterborough Lions John & Sheila Cheetham, who both remain valuable club members all these years on and are now nominated together for a community award. If you love the quiz please take a look, and vote for Lions John & Sheila!

Peterborough Lions were happy to be amongst several charities supporting the 5th annual Eye Open Spaces Fun Day, at Eye Community Centre, in – you guessed it by now – Eye. The Fun Day was opened by local MP Stuart Jackson, and it was nice to see a lot of people brave the rather damp weather forecast for what actually turned out to be a dry (if overcast) day.

Peterborough Lions had several members present, allowing us to run several fundraisers, including Feed The Lions, a bric-a-brac stall, selling the ever popular punch balls, and our favourite Lions Cage.

Peterborough Lion President Erica Constable was pleased to induct her second new member to the club in almost as many days: Cllr David Over, Mayor of Peterborough.

Cllr David’s enthusiasm will be a great asset to the club and to the City of Peterborough. As a small cog in the giant wheel that is the largest service organisation in the world, Peterborough Lions are always proud to welcome the current mayor as an honorary Lion and Cllr David Over will be well received by the club and Lions International alike.

In other news, Lion Mark Rogers, the club webmaster, showed off some new features of our Lions’ Share website, if you haven’t tried it yet check it out as it can raise money for the club without costing you a penny! Club Secretary Lion David Pope received a Certificate of Excellence from the International President, and Lion Erica announced that her project for her presidential year will be Peterborough Association for the Blind – all in all a productive and entertaining start to Erica’s year as president.

Peterborough Lions are pleased to have the proprietor of Maharanis Restaurant in Hampton, Farooq Mohammed, as our latest member.

Mr Farooq has been a supporter of Peterborough Lions for some time and has made substantial contributions to the club’s fundraising efforts, for causes as diverse as the club’s well used community minibus to the Haiyan Typhoon disaster.

As well as being a supporter of Peterborough Lions for over five years, Mr Farooq also does a lot of work in the community, for example providing the funding to allow a local school to offer breakfast for their pupils through the “Magic Breakfast” scheme.

It therefore gave several club members the perfect opportunity to visit Maharanis for a great meal and and for Lion President Erica Constable to present Mr Farooq with his membership certificate and pin.

Peterborough Lions were one of a number of Lions Clubs from Lions District 105EA (UK, East Anglia) who have provided sponsorship to children in Phuket since shortly after the Tsunami on 26th December 2004. The aim was to help the children come to terms with lost ones and to develop their own characters.  During this time the Phuket Sunshine Village was built.

When the sponsorship started those clubs were supporting 16 children and the majority have now grown up and have jobs and better lives. During this period Peterborough Lions have supported two girls and one boy, one of whom, Supattra, remains at the village whilst the other two having received education at the village have moved on with their lives and now have jobs.

Phuket Sunshine Village now has local volunteers who concentrate on the fundraising required to support children at the village, and with that in mind the directors of the project now feel that, as there are many different needs throughout the world, that the help can now cease so that the various Lions Clubs can concentrate on new projects.

As an expression of their gratitude they sent Peterborough Lions the attached certificate of appreciation.

Peterborough Lions are proud to have been able to provide support in the aftermath of the terrible events that devastated the area nearly ten years ago, and in particular to have been able to continue that support long after the events had ceased to be of interest to the news channels – work that would not have been possible without the support of the people of Peterborough.

A huge thank you to everyone who bought our 2013 quiz – a huge success and a credit to everyone who took part.

We had 740 completed quiz sheets returned to us, six of which were 100% correct and a further 19 achieving 99/100. The results of the draw were:

1st Prize – D Blundell, Moulton.
2nd Prize – R Dawson, Peterborough.
3rd Prize – W Parsh, Ramsey.
4th Prize – M Bielby, Leeds.
5th Prize – C Pairman, Falkirk.
6th Prize – B Dawson, Peterborough.
7th Prize – D Mundin, Northampton.
8th Prize – J Heath-Brown, Market Deeping.
9th Prize – J Edwards, Brighton.
10th Prize – C Roper, Northumberland.

As always it’s great to see winners from outside Peterborough – thank you to everyone who returned entries and kept our markers busy!

If you didn’t return your quiz and want to mark your own, or (and this probably applies to most of us) just want to find the answers to the questions you couldn’t answer, the answers are available to download here: Peterborough Lions Quiz 2013 Answers (Adobe PDF format)

So that’s it for the 2013 quiz! Take the next six months off to relax and prepare yourself for the 2014 quiz, available from September.