International President Eberhard Wirfs
October 2009
Dear Lion Min,
We are having an excellent start to our year, with a plus 4,080 membership growth for the first three months, compared to a minus 1,271 for the prior year. But what's even more exciting is that we are bringing Lionism to new areas and reaching out to new target markets.
Whether it's our new Lions club in northern Iraq, the 20 new clubs in China, or the increasing number of family, spouses and women at Lions, we are indeed working to MOVE TO GROW like never before. I am very proud of our early progress, and I owe thanks to you - the Club Leaders of the World - for your contributions to making it happen.
But while we have grown at the global level, the fact remains we are an organization of clubs. And we need to ensure that all our clubs, and all our Lion members, are being cared for, and nurtured, if we are to remain the world's largest and most effective service club organization in the years ahead.
The club is like the ginkgo tree which I adopted as the symbol of my MOVE TO GROW theme. Like the ginkgo, a club needs to be nurtured and cultivated to continue growing, it needs to stretch and move to receive sun light, and it needs to adapt to the environment around it to survive. Yet sometimes change happens slowly enough where we don't even notice it, and then we find ourselves behind.
This can also be true for clubs, especially older ones, where ways of working and meeting may have become routines, where activities and projects may have become a bit out dated, and where membership might have been going slowly down as a result.
But such challenges can be addressed, if you - the Club Leaders - create a plan and commit to action. Sometimes it's as simple as adopting a new project, or recruiting a few younger members to bring a spark of new ideas, or changing the format of your club meetings and activities to liven things up. So during the next three months, I'm humbly asking all clubs to adopt at least one new strategy to make your club even more vibrant.
And please, if you have seen more members leaving than joining in recent years, please get together with your board, or even hold a retreat with your club, to see if the reasons for this can be simply addressed. Please take note of tools outlined below that can help your club MOVE TO GROW.
I look forward to hearing about your success stories about planting a new ginkgo in your club. And I wish you all the best in the meantime.
With cordial regards,
Eberhard J. Wirfs, International President
Lions Clubs International
