About the Lions International

Melvin Jones - Founder of Lions Clubs International
Lions International Melvin Jones Memorial

Our Mission is to empower volunteers to serve their communities, meet humanitarian needs, encourage peace and promote international understanding through Lions clubs.

Our Vision is to be the global leader in community and humanitarian service.

The Lions international:
Lions Clubs International is the world's largest community service organization with clubs around the world.

Lions are an international network of 1.3 million men and women in 205 countries and geographic areas who work together to answer the needs that challenge communities around the world.

Known for working to end preventable blindness, Lions participate in a vast variety of projects important to their communities. These projects range from cleaning up local parks to providing supplies to victims of natural disasters.

LCIF:
Lions Clubs International Foundation is Lions helping Lions serve the world. Donations provide funding in the form of grants to financially assist Lions districts with large-scale humanitarian projects that are too extensive for Lions to finance on their own. The Foundation aids Lions in making a greater impact in their local communities, as well as around the world. Through LCIF, Lions ease pain and suffering and bring healing and hope to people worldwide.

Grants provide both immediate assistance following natural disasters and long-term disaster relief for reconstruction efforts. Grants help preserve sight, combat disability, promote health or serve youth.

Every dollar donated to LCIF goes toward a grant. Lions support is crucial as donations from Lions provide the majority of LCIF's revenue. LCIF receives a small amount of funding from foundations and corporations. It receives no club dues. LCIF is truly Lions helping Lions.

Lions International

Beginning in 1917

In 1917, a Chicago business leader asked a simple and world-changing question – what if people put their talents to work improving their communities? Almost 100 years later, Lions Clubs International is the world's largest service club organization, with 1.3 million members and countless stories of Lions acting on the same simple idea: let's improve our communities.

That business leader was Melvin Jones. He convened an organizational meeting of clubs that formed Lions Clubs International on June 7, 1917, in Chicago. Later that year, Lions held the first national convention in Dallas and created a constitution, by-laws, objects and a code of ethics.

1920: Going International

Just three years later, Lions went international when we established the first club in Canada. Mexico followed in 1927. In the 1950s and 1960s international growth accelerated, with new clubs in Europe, Asia and Africa.

1925: Helen Keller and the "Crusade Against Darkness"

One of our earliest and most influential causes has been eradicating blindness. That began in 1925, when Helen Keller addressed the Lions Clubs International Convention in Cedar Point, Ohio, USA. She challenged us to become "knights of the blind in the crusade against darkness." Since then, we have worked tirelessly to fulfill her charge to aid the blind and visually impaired.

1945: Uniting Nations

The ideal of an international organization is exemplified by our enduring relationship with the United Nations. We were one of the first nongovernmental organizations invited to assist in the drafting of the United Nations Charter and have supported the work of the UN ever since.

1957: Establishing Youth Programs

In the late 1950s, we created the Leo Program to provide the youth of the world an opportunity for personal development and contribution. There are now more than 5,500 Leo clubs in more than 130 countries, with more than 140,000 Leos worldwide.

1990: SightFirst

In 1990, we launched our most aggressive sight preservation effort, SightFirst. This US$215 million program aims to rid the world of preventable and reversible blindness by supporting desperately needed health care services. In 2008, Lions completed Campaign SightFirst II, which raised more than US$200 million to expand the program.

Today: Local and Global Service

Lions Clubs International grows stronger and extends our mission of service every day – in local communities, in all corners of the globe. In 2002, we were the first international service club to be granted permission to organize and operate clubs in mainland China. And in 2007, a Lions club was formed in Iraq. These clubs join an international network that has grown to include 45,000 clubs located in more than 200 countries across the globe.

Lions Code of Ethics

• To Show my faith in the worthiness of my vocation by industrious application to the end that I may merit a reputation for quality of service.
• To Seek success and to demand all fair remuneration or profit as my just due, but to accept no profit or success at the price of my own self-respect lost because of unfair advantage taken or because of questionable acts on my part.
• To Remember that in building up my business it is not necessary to tear down another's; to be loyal to my clients or customers and true to myself.
• Whenever a doubt arises as to the right or ethics of my position or action towards others, to resolve such doubt against myself.
• To Hold friendship as an end and not a means. To hold that true friendship exists not on account of the service performed by one another, but that true friendship demands nothing but accepts service in the spirit in which it is given.
• Always to bear in mind my obligations as a citizen to my nation, my state, and my community, as to give them my unswerving loyalty in word, act, and deed. To give them freely of my time, labor and means.
• To Aid others by giving my sympathy to those in distress, my aid to the weak, and my substance to the needy.
• To Be Careful with my criticism and liberal with my praise; to build up and not destroy.