​Lions: It’s lock-down, not shut-down.

L-R Lion Nirupa, President Janelle, Secretary Alan, 1st VP/Treasurer Jenny, part of the Lions team raring to add sizzle again to the Bay's market days.

For community-minded folk such as the Blockhouse Bay-Lynfield Lions Club, the long weeks of lockdown earlier this year were particularly frustrating. Not only was it hard not to be out helping and mixing with people, but they also had to get highly creative with their fundraising efforts which support youth, health, and other projects.
 
In lieu of their regular Blockhouse Bay village market day sausage sizzle/book sale they created a ‘virtual sausage sizzle’, and an online gallery for children to display their art created during lockdown. Surprisingly, this attracted entries from as far away as Sri Lanka.
 
The club received three new member applications while in lockdown, who then had the novelty of being inducted in the first-ever Lions Worldwide New Member Induction Day conducted by International President Jung-Yui Choi, online via the Zoom platform.
 
And now with the second Covid-19 lock down interfering with many planned activities, including a "Welcoming Spring" dinner, the Daffodil Day Collection and the Blockhouse Bay Market Day Sausage Sizzle, it’s déjà vu for President Janelle and the Blockhouse Bay-Lions Club.
 
“So, once again we will revert to virtual solutions to continue our community service such as the Virtual Sausage Sizzle and the Covid Art Exhibition”, Janelle says. “Both of these can be found on our website www.bhbl-lions.org, and we encourage the public to support our unorthodox fundraising efforts, which go towards very worthy causes”.  
 
Necessity provided BHB-Lynfield Lions with an opportunity for innovation, and along the way they discovered some modern solutions that are now proving very handy.