Lions make a push for defibrillator appeal

Following a fantastic collection in February for Lions International's Turkey Appeal at Base Coffee, Lion President Liz was thrilled to be invited by Base owner Charlie Magennis to hold another collection over the Easter weekend 8th & 9th April.

Having had to abandon the February collection which was to help the club's defibrillator appeal, when the Turkey Earthquake disaster occurred, the club collected instead for that. With the club still needing to find some finance to pay for replacement parts for the defibrillators located around the town, they were pleased to make the Easter appeal for the defibrillators. As well as maintaining and inspecting ten defibrillators located in Castlewellan, Maghera and Newcastle, the club are now at the planning stage of providing minimal awareness training in CPR and defibrillator use. The club have secured premises for training and are currently finalising dates over a three day period.

In other news regarding Newcastle Lions, on Thursday the club were thrilled to make a presentation regarding their recycling initiatives for spectacles and other useable products such as sewing machines, tools and bicycles at the Northern Ireland Resource Network Connecting and reconnecting day at CAN, Compass Advocacy Network at Lislagan Farm Ballymoney .CAN is a bold and creative organisation supporting children, young people and adults with learning disabilities ,autism and mental health issues on the North Coast of Northern Ireland .Representatives from many of the local councils, Bogside & Brandywell Initiative ,Bogside & Brandywell Initiative , CAN, East Belfast Mission, Queens and Ulster Universities and from Galway CRNI listened how the club had sent nearly 8,000 pairs of spectacles last year to Lions Medico France as well as helping three other charities with the products already mentioned. The club were invited to make a thirty minute podcast on their work , which NIRN will make available to help promote their message of reuse and repair.

Photograph. Newcastle Lions members Lion President Liz Murphy, our lion, and lions Tom Hughes Marian Mc Greevy and John Mc Donagh at Base Coffee

Newcastle Lions thank local opticians for helping repair and reuse of old spectacles.

Newcastle Lions are now providing suitable bins to our local opticians and also to some opticians in Belfast who have requested these, to take donations of glasses.

The bins help promote the work of the club with a contact phone number and the poster on it is eye catching . The glasses go to Lions Medico France where they are cleaned and distributed around the world to people in need. The club recently joined the Northern Ireland Resource Network. This group encourages environmental awareness, promotes ,rethink, reuse , repair and has many members whose details are on their website. In a first the club applied for a grant promoted by NIRN for their senior citizens outing

The club continues to try and attract new members . At Easter Lions will return to Base Coffee to try again and hold their defibrillator maintenance fund collection. Previously the collection was dropped when the Turkey earthquake occurred on the 10th February 2023. As part of the collection, club members will take names of those who would like to have CPR/Defibrillator awareness training , which hopefully will be taking place at the end of May in Newcastle, or even want to join the club.

Newcastle Lions President Liz Murphy checks the quality of the spectacles recycling bins going to opticians.

PDG Bernard Black, International President Teresa Dineen and Marian McGreevy

At welcome desk for International Lions Club