‘We just can't wait to get back out there again’
Maidenhead: Lions Club receives £2,000 grant from Advertiser’s owner
Maidenhead Lions Club has been striving to continue to help the vulnerable in the borough – despite losing members to the pandemic.
A £2,000 donation from the Louis Baylis Trust has helped the charity continue to spend money even though it has had to stop fundraising.
The money has been used to support Citizens Advice Maidenhead & Windsor referrals, social workers, Achieving for Children and Optalis, as well as care home residents and the homeless.
Recently, the Lions Club financed deliveries of supermarket vouchers to people in need and subsidised a dozen care homes with treats for staff and residents as well as funding Christmas lunches.
The club also made packs for the local homeless including wind-up radios, allowing them to tune in without needing a power source and provided help for people changing home due to domestic violence.
“We’re not able to raise money but we’re still spending - we’re getting a lot of appeals coming in and we’re still making a lot of donations,” said Brenda Butler, secretary of the club.
“We made the Louis Baylis Trust donation go a long way. Not being able to fundraise is a real problem for us and it saves us using a lot of our reserves. We want to continue to support people and the donation allows us to be able to put the money where it’s needed.”
At the moment, the Lions club is meeting via Zoom except for meetings of one to two people for charitable business. It has postponed its duck derby, which would normally be in May and is hoping to run it in September.
Maidenhead Lions Club also hopes it will be able to run its charity fair in Autumn but is less hopeful that it will be able to put on its annual swimarathon in July.
Many of the Lions themselves are vulnerable to COVID-19, causing more problems.
“We have sadly lost a couple of our Lions,” said Brenda. “This dreadful disease doesn’t care if you’re a nice, charitable person. But we have recruited new members and I’m delighted to say many of us are now vaccinated, so that’s a light at the end of the tunnel. We just can’t wait to get out there again.”