President's Message

The joint effort with Robin Hood and his Merry Men at the Nottingham Building Society running a Reverse Santa programme was a great success this year.  Christmas presents for children and young people were collected and distributed  by the Early Help Team and Buxton Street by Street to families whose Christmas would otherwise have been present-less.  Many thanks to everyone in Buxton who supported us and all of you for your donations made at our Christmas Collection at Morrisons.  We have now purchased 10 "Sleep Pods" this weekend to help those people with absolutely no alternative accommodation in Buxton - more details are on our events page of this website.

After years working in education abroad and elsewhere in the UK, I returned to my native Derbyshire some 28 years ago to serve for 8 years as Headteacher of the newly created Buxton Community School. A final career move failed to tear my family away from Buxton and our many new friends here. So it was a logical step to join a number of them in Buxton Lions when I retired 12 years ago and to continue to serve the community to which I had become so attached.

My entire term as President of Buxton Lions has taken place against the life changing challenges of the Coronavirus pandemic. It is a matter of pride for our Lions team that throughout this period we have continued to meet and plan - by Zoom, of course - and to continue to serve the community, most notably through a number of significant grants to frontline organisations which are supporting people through the pandemic like Connex Community Services, the Zink Project, Crossroads and the Samaritans. We have also relaunched our highly successful Message in a Bottle scheme; and we continue to support mentoring and community service amongst young people with awards to local schools.

Unfortunately, major fund-raising and community events in our calendar have had to be cancelled – our July Duck Race as part of the town’s Carnival and the town’s November Bonfire and Fireworks. But, thanks to the Nottingham Building Society, our Reverse Santa collections have gone ahead and we also hope to do some ”remote Christmas collections”, with thanks to Morrisons.

Now is a time for us to regroup and rebuild! My main ambition for the club is to recruit at least a dozen new members and to welcome all the new ideas and energy for community service that this will bring. So far we have been an all-male club, missing out on the huge potential that female members can offer, so attracting women members is key to our recruitment drive. Amazing local responses to the pandemic have demonstrated the great thirst amongst the community to serve as volunteers and our club offers a great opportunity to continue serving in this way when the immediate challenges of the pandemic lie behind us. So please do consider joining us.

Just telephone 07989 710832 or email us at:

president@buxtonlions.com

David Brindley

Club President