My fellow Lions,

Happy New Year! We believe every Lion has ushered into 2012 with a ‘bang’ and ‘pomp’. We believe every Lion has reiterated a greater desire to serve. We believe we have continued our commitment to extend our hands to those in need. We believe we have spread our message to a wider area of hope. We believe we are making a difference.

But fellow Lions, while we are celebrating the new beginning, we have to take a very big step backwards and look thoroughly into our district membership. Do you know we have only gained 16 (0.6%) new members up to 31st December 2011? Fellow Lions, this is something district 308 B1 has never ever experienced before! Our district has been the No. 1 district in the Multiple District for the past many many years. We have always been the forefront in membership growth! No doubt we have a small nett gain; but not in this disappointingly meager number, fellow Lions!!! What happened?? What went wrong, fellow Lions?? We really and urgently need to look seriously into our extra pairs of hands now; and it’s now or never! We have pushed the panic button already!

We hope clubs will implement the CEP now. The district is introducing two new awards; namely the ‘Most Improved Club’ and ‘District Outstanding Lion of the Year Award’. The ‘Most Improved Club Award’ is to target clubs with less than 20 members to challenge themselves to gain excellence status; clubs that have not had received any top clubs awards before. The second award is targeted at any member of a club, except the top key officers, to be active and be an outstanding Lion of the year. Each zone will receive one award in the first category and one member in each club in the second. In addition, it has been proposed to award the Membership Director (Chairman of the Membership Committee) who brings in at least 5 members into their respective club.

Fellow Lions, we are trying very hard to increase membership but our vision still remains, that is, to maintain a ‘Zero Drop’. But nevertheless, a growth will definitely maintain our district as the No. 1 status and we believe we can still stretch out to reach every corner of our district in service.

Fellow Lions, the beginning of a new calendar year is a good time to evaluate your clubs; to reflect on the previous achievements, and look ahead to your club’s future opportunities. And fellow Lions, this can be done through the survey ‘How’s your ratings’ form obtainable from LCI (ME15b). This exercise will project your club into looking in 10, 20 or ever 30 years from now, to realize our mission.

Fellow Lions, by the time you receive this e-Newsletter, you’ll be celebrating another festival; Chinese New Year. Just forget about all the above for a while; go celebrate and when you had enough, please sit down and think about MEMBERSHIP, okay? We believe you will; we believe you can.

Here’s wishing every member, ‘Qong Xi Fa Cai’, ‘Wan Su Ru Yi’ & ‘Nien Niew Yu Yee’
Yam Seng!

Your Governor,

Dr. Ben C Ng