“So what are you guys going to do with the zucchini?”

“We’re going to cut them up and then … .”

“Eat them.”

“And then dehydrate them.”

“Yeah, dehydrate them.

“And then eat them again.”

The middle schoolers show off the zucchini they’ve just helped to harvest, waving the vegetables through the cold air with one hand while keeping the other tucked into sweatshirt pockets. But the unseasonable cold isn’t dampening their enthusiasm. The girls are part of a Farm to School program started in 2011 by the Whitefish Lions Club.

“We really wanted to have something that was more geared towards children,” says Greg Shaffer, one of the original club members behind the idea. While Montana has one of the lowest incidences of Type 2 diabetes in the nation, the Lions hope that by teaching kids the link between what they eat and where it comes from, they could foster a lifelong love of healthy eating. Plus, the school district was looking to get a locally sourced lunch program off the ground—something to help increase kids’ awareness of where their food came from and reduce the carbon footprint of food travel.

It was a good project for the club. Shaffer’s employer donated a plot of land and the Lions got to work preparing the garden. Everyone pitched in. “You know, maybe some didn’t want to weed, but they could help mow,” says Shaffer.

That first summer yielded several thousand pounds of fresh vegetables. Seven years and one location change later, the Farm to School Legacy Project continues to produce approximately 3,000 pounds of fresh produce that go directly into school lunches each harvest.

More importantly, the program connects students to the foods they eat, introducing them to vegetables they may have never tried before, or helping them to see familiar ones in a new light. Ammann Koch-Ford is a senior at Whitefish High School. “As a little kid, you don’t like vegetables. But then you see how they grow, and you’re like, ‘Oh, I want to try that.’ And you try it, and you’re like, ‘Wow, this is really good.’ Like, a freshly grown carrot is amazing.”

It started out as just a little greenhouse that students could use to do some projects. And it has grown into an incredible instructional tool for our district.

So amazing that students and teachers at the high school began raising money for a greenhouse so they could continue to enjoy the fresh fruits and vegetables year-round. Soon they had raised $70,000—enough for far more than the modest greenhouse they’d had in mind. Their fundraising efforts drew the attention of the community and led to a partnership with the Whitefish Community Foundation. Now, that original seed money has blossomed into a $2.1 million Center for Sustainability and Entrepreneurship (CSE).

The CSE is a state-of-the-art, net zero facility that will include classrooms, laboratories, a greenhouse, energy systems, production gardens, orchards and an experimental forest. It will serve K-12 students as well as the community through adult learning classes.

“It started out as just a little greenhouse that students could use to do some projects. And it has grown into an incredible instructional tool for our district,” says Lion Heather Davis Schmidt, the superintendent of the Whitefish School District. “When I became superintendent I didn’t realize the involvement that the Lions club had in the school district with the Farm to School garden. And so it was really neat to realize the close tie between the school district and the Lions club.”

And the Lions aren’t done yet. “We’re working on getting a Leos club up and running at the high school that would be in conjunction with the program,” says Shaffer. “What we did was plant the seed with our garden. Now it’s branching off in all kinds of areas. Who knows where it’s going to end up.”

Davis-Schmidt looks over the construction for the new center, which stands within eyesight of the Lions’ garden, where the middle schoolers are plucking and washing zucchinis, corn and potatoes alongside Lion volunteers. “We often talk in the school district about bringing the community into our schools, and our schools into the community,” she says. “And this is a perfect example of doing it.”

The Downtown San Diego Lions were looking for a project that would pack a punch.

With the goal of accelerating research to prevent blindness, the Downtown San Diego Lions Club Welfare Foundation made a US$400,000 gift to support the UC San Diego Shiley Eye Institute’s BioBank—the largest gift the organization has made to a single project.

In recognition of their support, the BioBank research lab at the Shiley Eye Institute has been named the Downtown San Diego Lions Club BioBank for Vision.

The support from the San Diego Lions Club Welfare Foundation aids our research and helps us to better diagnose, prevent and treat eye diseases.

The BioBank was launched in 2012 with the goal of leveraging the latest in bioinformatics technology and genetic-sequencing tools to advance understanding of diseases such as macular degeneration, glaucoma, and diabetic retinopathy—all of which are leading causes of blindness in the United States.

The BioBank provides a library of biological samples with complete medical and family history and other demographic information that researchers can use to learn about predictors for diseases (biomarkers) and effectiveness of therapies.

“The BioBank allows our ophthalmology team to make remarkable advances in understanding the biology of diseases and the promise of personalized medicine,” says Robert N. Weinreb, M.D., chair and Distinguished Professor of Ophthalmology and director of the Shiley Eye Institute. “The support from the San Diego Lions Club Welfare Foundation aids our research and helps us to better diagnose, prevent and treat eye diseases.”

The Lions went to UC San Diego with the goal of supporting a major project that leverages the latest technology and research to help patients with blinding eye diseases.

“The BioBank has the potential to make a significant difference for the thousands of patients in San Diego with blinding eye diseases, as well as patients around the world,” says Steve Zapoticzny, president of the Downtown San Diego Lions Club.

“We are thrilled to join the Shiley Eye Institute—the nation’s leading institute for efforts to prevent and cure blindness—in this partnership.”

Terry Loftus, past president for the Downtown San Diego Lions Club, led the partnership proposal along with fellow Lion and Past President George Saadeh. “We were looking into stem cell and genetic research that is making strides toward curing these diseases,” says Loftus. “When we came across an article about what UC San Diego is doing in this area, the pieces started to fall into place.”

At the Shiley Eye Institute, doctors and researchers have made measurable progress in addressing retinal degeneration, glaucoma, diabetic retinopathy, and other primary diseases of vision. And the hope is that the discoveries made here will have an impact globally. One of the aspects of the ongoing studies on samples from the Biobank includes identifying biomarkers for eye diseases based on biogeographic ancestry to understand how the markers are applicable to individuals with various ancestries.

“Our physician-scientists are involved in diverse and collaborative research projects that aim to improve treatments for eye diseases and hasten the day when blindness is entirely preventable,” Weinreb says. “The BioBank provides a critical resource that they can draw upon to accelerate the translation of research into treatments.”

As a 6-year-old boy, Joseph Pagulayan was abandoned, left to wander the streets of Manila in the Philippines alone.

His survival was dependent on finding something to eat each day “like a street dog,” he says. His world was the public market where every day he made a few pesos carrying buckets of fish from delivery trucks to fish vendors’ stalls, and he slept wherever the night found him.

There were no dreams, he remembers. There was just the need to survive.

Then one day somebody—he does not know who—took him to the Lions Streetchildrens Center. For 10 years there he had food, clothes, shelter and friends. He was educated and taught to cut hair. And until he reached the legal age of 18, he had a home.

Pagulayan is 29 now, married, has two children and works as a hairdresser. And he returns to his home at the center often to play guitar and cut hair for the young boys, who idolize him.

“I am doing this for free because I realize that life is indeed too hard to live if a child is not educated, no skills, no parents, no one to depend on for help,” he says.

Pagulayan is there because of the Lions. In 1998, Quezon City Cubao Lion Emmanuel “Manny” Cuasay and Past District Governor Heracillo Palad (now deceased) gathered the Lions together and said, “Let’s do something for the children.”

Let’s do something, they meant, to help the Philippines’ youngest—the thousands of children who roam the streets day and night with no home to go to. They are abandoned and abused; many have parents who have nothing to provide for them.

Led by Cuasay, Lions partnered with the city’s Department of Welfare and Social Development, and with the help of Lions Clubs International Foundation, opened the Lions Streetchildren Center in 2000. In 2005, with assistance from LCIF, they added the Lions Livelihood and Skills Training Center where children 12 and older are taught technical and electrical skills, cooking, carpentry and hairdressing so they have a marketable skill when they make their own way at age 18.

I am doing this for free because I realize that life is indeed too hard to live if a child is not educated, no skills, no parents, no one to depend on for help.

About 250 children live in the village that includes four houses—two for boys and two for girls ages 5 to 18, Cuasay says. Although it is staffed by the welfare department, five trustees from four Lions clubs in District 301 D2 manage the home that is dedicated to the youngest boys. Lions clubs and other organizations support them, Cuasay says, but day-to-day needs such as building repairs and problems with children fall on the trustees and especially on Cuasay, who is at the village at least once a week.

“I’m sorry that I cannot do more,” says Cuasay. “But I’m happy that we can help some because some is better than none.”
Jenelyn Cabrera, 26, also learned to be a hair stylist in the three years when the center was her home. Born to a poor family in a southern province, she stowed away on a ship for Manila where she became another streetchild wondering around the port until the day someone took her to the village.

Now she lives in a boarding house close to work but travels far to support her father and siblings, who live in a shanty. Her father earns $10 a day as a carpenter.

“I’m sorry there are more sad stories than there are good stories to tell,” says Cuasay. “But things are a little better because Lions are here. For 17 years we have done our best, taking small steps to make the lives of marginalized children a little better. We cannot close our doors to the children.”

To showcase the life-changing service that Leos perform in their communities, the Leo Club Program hosts the International Leo Day Video Contest. Now in its third year, the event provides young people with a unique opportunity to share how and why they serve.

The theme for 2017 was #YOUthSERVE, and Leos were asked to produce videos that demonstrated how they served within the five service areas: Diabetes, Environment, Hunger Relief, Childhood Cancer, and Vision.

Placing third, the Olongapo City Leo Club’s video focused on Vision. The club’s winning video told the story of Kimberly Mae Capuvan, a 21-year-old woman from Olongapo City, Zambales, Philippines, who had lost all hope in life because she was unable to see clearly. And she couldn’t afford to purchase eyeglasses.

“I have had a very difficult time since I was 9 years old,” Capuvan recalls, “especially at school. I always had to sit near the blackboard so I could see, and at night, I got headaches because of my nearsightedness.”

Her outlook improved dramatically when the Olongapo City Peninsula Lions Club was looking for young people who needed glasses. Capuvan’s teacher asked her if she would like to have a pair, and she was thrilled when she was selected for the program. The Lions made her feel that she wasn’t alone, and fitted her with the perfect glasses.

“The first time I put them on, everything came into crystal- clear focus, and I felt new and alive because, for many years, I had trouble reading,” she says. “The glasses have made a world of difference in my studying and in my life.”

Because her local Lions club had helped her so much when she needed it, Capuvan wanted to be a part of the organization. A friend invited her to join the Olongapo City Leo Club and she jumped at the chance. She now serves as the vice president of the club.

For Kimberly Mae Capuvan, vice president of the Olongapo City Leo Club in the Philippines, eyeglasses from the Olongapo City Peninsula Lions made “a world of difference.”

Her favorite service project was when her Leo colleagues traveled to a far away Filipino community to donate books to children. The town is difficult to get to, but she knew how much the books would mean to the kids because they lived so far from an urban area.

Today, Capuvan is working on her second bachelor’s degree in management, having finished her bachelor’s degree in hotel and restaurant management. She has also completed units in education so that she can pursue her dream of becoming a teacher and advocate for children’s vision in the near future. In her free time, she participates in sports. For the past four years Capuvan has played wide receiver for the Olongapo Warriors Flag Football team and she hopes to travel the world one day.

Our eyes are our guide along life’s journey. And I’m living proof that clear vision leads to a brighter future.

Becoming a Leo has made her realize that she can touch other people’s lives in a positive way, she says. “I was helped by a Lions club. Now I want to give back. There’s no end to what we can do to help others, together.”

She is also grateful to the Olongapo City Leo Club members for being her brothers and sisters in the organization. “I wouldn’t have been able to share my story if it weren’t for them,” she adds. “Our eyes are our guide along life’s journey. And I’m living proof that clear vision leads to a brighter future.”

In Sonora, California, a wooden snowman on the lawn says much more than “Happy Holidays.”

The snowmen, like the wooden pumpkins that decorated homes at Halloween, are a sign of support for the Sonora Lions’ Tree Mortality Aid Program (TMAP).

Through TMAP, Lions are using the wood of beetle-killed trees to create decorative lawn ornaments that they sell to raise money. That money helps low-income and elderly with the cost of removing other beetle-killed trees on their property.

Sonora lies in the middle of the Central Sierra where state officials estimate about 66 million trees have died from the lethal combination of drought and beetle infestation. While most of these trees are on land owned by the federal government, not all are. For homeowners, taking down one dead tree can be difficult and expensive. Many people have more than one.

Removal of the dead trees is essential, Lion and retired Forest Service employee Glenn Gottschall explained to his club last year. Dead trees near the home present a falling hazard and a fire hazard. But many people cannot afford to have the work done or cannot do it themselves.

Faced with that problem, Past District Governor and Sonora Lion Tom Penhallegon came up with the idea to organize the TMAP. With the support of other Sonora agencies, more than 100 people have been identified as in need of assistance, and more than 150 trees on private property have been cleared, says Penhallegon.

“The fire hazard has become so apparent this year. The average cost to remove trees around a residence is $1,000 per tree, and many of these homes have between four and 14 trees that need to be removed to bring them into compliance with the state,” he says.

Lions get the 3-inch-thick rounds of wood, and with some dowel rods, buttons, paint, a hand-me-down scarf and a little artistic talent, they take a bad situation and turn it into a fundraiser and smile inducer.

The festive pieces have been popular, and the program has raised $27,000, he says. The Lions and other civic organizations want to increase that to $1 million.

TMAP has also received grants from state, corporate and local entities totaling more than $100,000. The rest is being raised by projects from Lions, Kiwanis and Rotary clubs, and local donors, and Lions expect the project to be ongoing for at least two more years.