Colleyville Lions Club
Lions History
Lions International began in 1917, when a Chicago businessman asked what would happen if business leaders put their talent to work for their communities.
1917: an idea in Chicago
Lions International traces to an organizational meeting held on June 7, 1917, in Chicago, Illinois. Melvin Jones, a Chicago businessman, had put a question to his peers: what if the business clubs they already belonged to aimed at something beyond their own members' interests?
October 1917: the first convention, in Dallas
The new association held its first national convention in October 1917 — in Dallas, Texas. The organisation that now spans more than 200 countries and geographic areas held its founding convention about thirty miles from where the Colleyville Lions Club meets on Friday mornings.
1925: Helen Keller's challenge
In 1925, Helen Keller addressed the Lions convention at Cedar Point, Ohio, and asked Lions to become “knights of the blind in the crusade against darkness.”
Lions took the assignment. Vision has been the organisation's signature service ever since — eyeglass recycling, sight screening, eye banks, and vision programs in places where eye care barely exists. The Colleyville club's Knights of Sight Golf Tournament is named directly from that sentence.
Lions International has also worked on hearing health, on the same conviction.
Beyond one country
The first Canadian Lions club was chartered in 1920. In 1945, Lions helped form the non-governmental organization sections of the newly created United Nations, and Lions International has held consultative status with the UN ever since.
Today Lions and Leos serve in more than 200 countries and geographic areas.
Lions International's SightFirst program has funded vision work at a scale no single club could reach.
[VERIFY: SightFirst launch year and cumulative funding figure. The club's current history page states 1990 and US$143.5 million, but that entry is flagged stale in the fact harvest and could not be corroborated against lionsclubs.org. Re-verify at source or leave the figures off.]
The rule that hasn't changed
From the beginning, one principle was written into how Lions clubs work:
No club shall hold out the financial betterment of its members as its object.
A Lions club is not a networking group that does charity on the side. That distinction is a century old and it is still the point.
It started with one man's question.
Melvin Jones asked what business leaders could do for their communities. Everything since is the answer.