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President Richard Sheahan addressed the group:
Thank you all so much for coming along tonight to our little changeover. Acknowledging the transfer of the Board is really important, but so is recognizing the amazing efforts of the team and highlighting the phenomenal work done in the Community by Lions members.
I’ve said it before and I’m sure I’ll say it publicly again: It’s a privilege to work alongside such a dedicated group of community-minded people as our members, friends and sponsors. It always amazes me how much time and effort Lions members commit to help the less well off. They don’t benefit one cent from the hours they spend:
sweltering behind the barbecue,
from persuading people to buy raffle tickets every second Saturday at the Hotel
from freezing outside IGA in the middle of Winter collecting food for the hungry,
from rising at the crack of dawn to set up marquees and managing feisty stallholders at our Market Day. Kerry, Linda …….!!!
Most of our members aren’t that well off. I know life is tough for some. They do it because they are selfless people who just enjoy helping others. It certainly helps when the environment in which we operate is a friendly one. And we do work hard at that, It’s very hard to keep members if they don’t feel comfortable, welcome and wanted and part of a healthy team. Their dedication is unbelievable, and the local Community is just so lucky to have these people in their midst
So what did Oatley Lions get up to this year?
Well, every time we hosted an outdoor function we seemed to help the farmers with their drought problems. Both Market Days in 2023 were a touch damp….. well damned wet.
Our Annual Golf Day was due on April 5th but you guessed it, Sydney had over 200mm of rain that day, its heaviest one day rainfall for 32 years. We pushed it to July 12th and yep… three solid weeks of rain preceding the day left the course unplayable, AGAIN ! Let’s hope that on October 4th the sun is shining, and we’ve hopefully had a couple of weeks of dry weather leading up to the day! You can see the effect it’s having on John Morgan and myself. I’ve gone grey and John’s pulled all his hair out!
We hold our fortnightly raffles at the Hotel. Ros and her team do a great job and the locals love the chance to take home the lamb roast and vegetables.
We hold our quarterly food collections outside IGA. John Chate does an exceptional job in keeping the stall manned for two full days and it’s become an effective way to introduce friends, students, scouts, brownies etc to what being a Lion in the Community is all about. We’ve had a slight change of direction when it comes to the beneficiaries of our food drives. We decided that rather than give the proceeds to Exodus and Vinnies, we’d concentrate on some of the smaller local charities such as Crateful, One Meal and Georges River Life Care. It’s been pleasing to get to know these local groups and to have them support our functions!
We held a very successful Trivia Night at Penshurst RSL. Liane has turned an idea of hers into one of our major functions each year
We run bbqs for Georges River Council. Now bbq team, can I have an honest answer!! Is anyone upset that we didn’t do Eurovision for GRC this year?
We hold our Christmas Market Day at the Uniting Church in which the community groups are invited to display their wares. Not quite the scale of the Festival but a little more manageable.
John Morgan manages our very popular Rock’n’Roll night at the Hotel where the Hips provide a great evening’s entertainment.
We hope to run a Golf Day in October.
Probably our highlight is our Major Project which provides equipment for the Paediatric and Special Care Nursery Wards at St George Hospital. Thanks to Lyn Humphreys and The Walter Richard Salmon Foundation, we’ve been able to donate close to $200,000 worth of equipment in the last 5 years.
We were thrilled to be able to drive a new Zone Project this year. We are lucky enough to have The Walter Richard Salmon Foundation that is totally aligned with our belief of helping unwell children at local hospitals. Between the local Lions Clubs, we have been able to contribute $42,000 to Sutherland Hospital’s Pediatric Ward toward the purchase of a state-of-the-art humidicrib. We’re hoping to be able to replicate that donation for years to come.
Along with Christmas Cakes & Pudding Sales, Peace Posters, mentoring local Duke of Edinburgh students, Spectacle Collection etc we’re a busy club!
In putting this talk together, I thought I’d run through the bank accounts just to try and calculate exactly what we had donated to the Community. It’s amazing how quickly you forget just how much we’ve achieved during the year.
In no particular order, we made the following payments
Crateful $8,500 trivia nite + raffles - van
St George Hospital $40,000 Golf / hotel / WRSF
Little Legs Foundation $1,000 trivia nite winners
Bears of Hope $4,500 rock’n’roll nite
St George Fam Serv $4,500 rock‘n’roll’nite
Caring Kids $1.500 Elvio's buying gifts for carers
Oatley Bay Sea Scouts $840 Trash and Treasure
Riverwood Air League $10,000 Market day
Oatley Uniting Church $800 Market day
St G and Suth Medical $570 Kevin Greene's favoured charity
ALF Sari-Elle $5,000 Her phenomenal run in Everest
LCIF $2,000 Any donation is valuable
Hearing Dogs $2,578 raffles and donation
George River Life Care $1,000 raffles
Oatley FFF and HS $1,000 calendar seed funding
Lions Mobility Fndn $1.635 raffles
Sutherland Hospital $15,000 WRSF – zone project
Redfern Jarjum College $1,000 Triv nite first prize
Nurses Schol Fndn $500 Triv nite random draw
Club Rivers Biggest MT $300 Childrens cancer
CR Mystery Box Rally $300 Childrens cancer
Tanzania Teaching $235 funding shortfall
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$102,000
IGA Food Collections $16,000
Missed 1st Market Day $8,000
Missed golf day $10,000
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$34,000
I’d particularly like to thank the following people for their efforts in ensuring the effective running of our Club throughout the year.
Firstly, to our Secretary John Perkins. John, you do a great job in maintaining the requirements of a very active Club.
To our Treasurer, Deb Street. Thanks for keeping us all honest and accounted for!
To John Morgan, for keeping tabs on me, his constant support and his ultra positive nature. I don’t think I’ve ever heard him say a nasty word about anyone in the Club!
To our IT guru, Brian Rees who manages to publicize our Club across a wide range of social media platforms and educates resident computer dinosaurs such as myself.
To Ros and the Raffle Team. I love it when I can totally rely on them pumping money into the accounts every fortnight. They do a fantastic job marketing our Club!
To Liane, for taking control of the Trivia night and Trash and Treasure at the Market Day. I know anything she touches will be done efficiently and profitably.
To our two youngest members, Bethany and Diane for jumping in and taking on really important roles within the Club. It’s great to add computer skills to our arsenal!
Dan Simpson, we’re so grateful for your generosity in providing estate packages for all of our major functions. They are always well bid for at auctions and provide us with much needed funds.
To our 2 members of parliament, Mark Coure and David Coleman. We appreciate your support of our Club and are always happy to work with you guys in the local area.
And finally, to Lyn Humphreys, owner of the Hotel and our major sponsor. Lyn you are such a community minded person and we are so lucky to have you and your staff on board. Can you believe it’s 5 years since we tied the knot! We’re thrilled with the relationship we have with you and your team and we’re really looking forward to our future endeavours together!
Where are we headed?
You guys and girls really make life easy for me, because I don’t want it to change what we do too much!
I said last year that the future of our Club lies with new members and finding younger members that are really computer literate and have great social media skills. Nothing has changed. Keep searching!
We have spent time this year nurturing youth and have received assistance from local schools for our Market Days and our IGA food collections. Mentoring our youth is such an important part of what we do and it is so worthwhile to try and instil a basic interest in volunteering in our children.
Succession is an important factor in maintaining the future of any Club and that includes us. We need members to step up and consider taking on one of the senior roles in the Club. We have a couple of potential assistant secretaries… and I’m really hoping we may be able to get Ilinka back as an Assistant Treasurer. In case you didn’t know, I don’t intend being President for ever!
We need new blood to keep our Club healthy. We all know we’re getting older and hopefully smarter, and that’s why we’re looking for ways to avoid having us old guys up on ladders and generally doing things we shouldn’t be doing any more!
We’re looking at estate planning and trying to work out ways that we can have people leave money to us via their estate planning. It’s a work in progress but hey, it’s a lot easier than selling 5,000 sausages!
I continue to challenge all members to think about new projects that we could consider to help the local area. There are so many opportunities out there to improve lives and to make our community a better place, but I need people to lead these projects. Don’t be afraid to speak up at meetings and voice your ideas.
The Club is in a fairly healthy position and that is due to the effort that you guys put in, and there’s no reason to see that changing with youth peeking through. I love working with our team and the Hotel and am really looking forward to seeing what our little Club can achieve in the next few years.
This is the part of the night that I really like,,,, rewarding people who make my life easier! As far as I’m concerned you all deserve awards, but that would make it like a kindergarten class where everybody gets an encouragement award. The awards are HERE.
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