It’s much more than hurt pride … a directive that has sounded the death knell for the world’s remaining Lioness Clubs has left two affected Sunshine Coast groups roaring mad.
The Chicago-based Lions International headquarters will close all remaining Lioness Clubs by June 30 this year and is encouraging the displaced community-minded women to become full voting and participating members of the once male-only Lions Clubs to grow their membership.
Until recently, the Sunshine Coast-based Lioness Clubs operated in Coolum, Buderim, Mooloolaba and Caloundra. Buderim and Coolum clubs have already wound down.
The first inkling Mooloolaba Lionesses had of the decision to close the clubs throughout Australia, New Zealand and Papua New Guinea was an email sent to secretary Lorraine Buhk.
Even the club’s sponsor and close community ally, Mooloolaba Lions, had no notification beforehand.
The ageing members of both these service clubs are devastated.
Mooloolaba Lions-Lioness liaison officer Kerry Naumann said he was feeling “sad that it’s got to this and angry because it has”.
“We are not happy with (the closure),” Kerry said as he joined a farewell afternoon tea for Lioness Club members at Alex Surf Club.
“We’re a very close-knit group, the Lions and Lioness club. We work very well together.
“There’s a lot of things that we do jointly, like Christmas cakes and Bunnings barbecues, that we may not be able to handle without these guys (Lionesses).
“To see them (Lioness Clubs) closing down, it’s a terrible decision.
“We weren’t consulted or given any say in it.
“It was just a decision made at Lions headquarters in Chicago. I think they’ll live to regret it, I really do.
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“They would have been better off leaving us alone until everybody just folded because of age.”
Lions Clubs International (LCI) was founded in 1917, but the first Lioness Club only began in 1975 in Mount Pleasant, North Carolina.
Lioness Clubs are projects of Lions Clubs and have provided the opportunity for women to participate in community service without becoming full Lions members.
The Lioness Club in Australia started in 1976.
The movement grew in Australia and Papua New Guinea to more than 100 Lioness Clubs with 2000 members.
The Lions Clubs International website (www.lionsclubs.org) states that in April 2018, the LCI International board of directors made the decision to encourage all current Lioness clubs to “join the Lions family” by extending to June 2021 the Join Together program.
The program was created “to grow the capabilities of Lions Clubs International by encouraging other community-based, non-profit organisations to join us on this journey of hope”.
This allowed Lions-Lioness clubs to form in some instances, but only until June 30 this year when they will simply revert to being called a Lions Club with male and female members with equal rights.
Kerry said Mooloolaba Lions Club members had tried to fight the closure decision – and made a few enemies – with “lots and lots of very uncourteous emails to head office in Australia to be forwarded on to America, though we don’t know whether they ever were or not”.
But their pleas had fallen on deaf ears.
And as a result, the closures will have much wider community ramifications.
Mooloolaba Lioness Club president Marie Horan – one of three charter members remaining – said her club had just celebrated 18 years of operation on May 31.
Members raised $20,000-25,000 a year in funds for local community and international projects. Some years, that figure had been $30,000.
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With the dark clouds hanging over their heads and with what Marie and Lorraine both consider “minimal work” able to be performed by members this year, Mooloolaba Lionesses had still been able to raise $15,000 as a final hurrah.
Marie said the 17 Mooloolaba club members – with an average age of 70 – had always worked well with their male counterparts in selling Lions Christmas cakes, running sausage sizzles and the big commitment of the weekly Fishermans Rd Markets that have been running for 22 years.
Proceeds from these ventures also boosted Lioness fundraising.
Similarly, Lions Club members had helped them at annual Pink and 70.3 triathlons and in other projects.
“We do everything together,” Marie said.
“If they’ve got a sausage sizzle, we’re helping because they don’t have enough members now, either.
“We used to do a lot of triathlon marshalling. We’d be there at 5.30 or 6 o’clock in the morning until 2.30 in the afternoon. Big days. Mostly standing.
“We do work at the markets, manning the info (booth) at the gate the first and third Sunday of every month so that they have a morning off. We’d do that from 8.30am-1pm.
“We’d be down there in the dark, setting up in winter.
“And I tell you, a lot of it has been bloody hard work. You get home at the end of it and you think, ‘I can’t do this again’. But you do. You turn up the next time.”
Lorraine believes the closure decision was based solely on boosting coffers through new membership in a consolidated Lions Club network.
“To join a Lions club is quite expensive: it $100-something,” she said.
“To join our Lioness club was $20. We deliberately kept it like that.
“They (LCI) were looking for more finance.”
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But Marie and Lorraine both believe LCI will fall well short of a majority of Lioness Club members throughout Australia moving across to the Lions Club fold.
None of the Mooloolaba Lionesses will become Lions.
“Out of all the clubs that we associate with, the Lioness Clubs, I don’t think one of them has joined the Lions, purely because of the way that it (the decision) was done – which is unfair to the Lions Clubs because it’s not their fault,” Marie said.
But the Mooloolaba Lioness Club members will stay together as one unit until June 30, when their Lions Club members host a dinner in their honour. And able-bodied former Lionesses will continue their commitment to the community in an unofficial capacity wherever and whenever they are needed.
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The catch-ups that are so important to members, especially those who may have no other regular social outings, also will keep rolling on.
“We will still catch up every month for coffee or lunch on a Wednesday,” Marie said.
“It’s the friendship that we like. That’s the saddest part of it, really.
“It’s not losing the club, it’s losing the friendship.”
