Lions Club looking for new members in Cloquet area

The Lions Clubs International wants you. Joanne Ogden, district governor of Lions Clubs District 5M10, was in Cloquet Tuesday recruiting people to start a new Lions Club in Cloquet.

The Lions Club is a service organization made up of 1.4 million members in 206 countries, with several pillars of service, including sight, environment, childhood cancer and answering local needs.

“They say the Red Cross is always there, but the Lions Club usually beats them there,” Ogden said. “The Lions think the best people to help are the people already there. Today, if you had a flood in Cloquet, I could request emergency funds and I would have $10,000 in the Cloquet Lions Club bank account by the end of the day, $100,000 for a major catastrophe to help with whatever.”

District 5M10 has 46 clubs and covers the area from Bemidji to Pickle Lake Ontario in the north, and Baudette, Minn. to Marathon Ontario (or halfway through the hump on Lake Superior).

Ogden pointed out that there is a current club in Carlton with nearly two dozen members, and explained that it takes 20 members to start a club. The district governor team offers guidelines but they don’t tell local clubs what to do.

“Your club, your way,” she said.

Anyone who is interested in being part of a new local Lions Club is encouraged to email Ogden at [email protected] or call 807-271-0941 (in Canada). The Lions District organization held a meeting in Cloquet Wednesday, after this issue of the Pine Knot News went to press.