When caring people join together, roll up their sleeves and take action to make their community better, it’s a beautiful thing—and an incredible feeling for everyone involved. That’s Lions. Being a Lion is about leading by example, building relationships and improving the world through kindness. It’s 1.4 million Put Leadership Skills into Action, Join a Community of Good, Access a Global Support System, Experience the Feeling of Service
Around the world, Lions are serving their communities through vision projects, youth engagement, services for children, health initiatives, disaster relief and more. Where there’s a NEED, there’s a LION in your COMMUNITY and around the WORLD.
How the Lion’s Club was started…
Chicago business leader Melvin Jones asked a simple and world-changing question – what if people put their talents to work improving their communities? Almost 100 years later, Lions Clubs International is the world’s largest service club organization, with more than 1.35 million members in more than 46,000 clubs and countless stories of Lions acting on the same simple idea: let’s improve our communities.
Just three years after our founding, Lions became international when we established the first club in Canada. Mexico followed in 1927. In the 1950s and 1960s international growth accelerated, with new clubs in Europe, Asia and Africa.
Helen Keller addressed the Lions Clubs International Convention in Cedar Point, Ohio, USA, and challenged Lions to become “knights of the blind in the crusade against darkness.” Since then, we have worked tirelessly to aid the blind and visually impaired.
The ideal of an international organization is exemplified by our enduring relationship with the United Nations. We were one of the first nongovernmental organizations invited to assist in the drafting of the United Nations Charter and have supported the work of the UN ever since.
In the late 1950s, we created the Leo Program to provide the youth of the world with an opportunity for personal development through volunteering. There are approximately 160,000 Leos and 6,400 Leo clubs in more than 140 countries and geographic areas worldwide.
Lions Clubs International Foundation (LCIF) assists Lions with global and large-scale local humanitarian projects. Through our Foundation, Lions have received more than $826 million in grants to help meet the needs of their local and global communities.
Through LCIF, Lions are restoring sight and preventing blindness on a global scale with the SightFirst program. Launched in 1990, Lions have raised more than $415 million for this initiative. SightFirst targets the major causes of blindness: low vision, trachoma, river blindness, childhood blindness, diabetic retinopathy and glaucoma.
Lions Clubs International has impacted the lives of millions all over the world. Through our signature projects, we are able to help in the areas of sight, health, youth, the elderly, the environment and disaster relief. We serve in more than 200 countries and geographic areas around the globe.