It was all things Lion recently in nearby Escalon, as several Lions Club members from a number of counties made their way there for a quarterly district meeting.

Oakdale is part of Lions International District 4-A1, an eight-county region that encompasses Amador, Calaveras, Madera, Mariposa, Merced, San Joaquin, Stanislaus and Tuolumne counties.

Serving as District Governor is Claudia Miller; she said the two-day meeting Friday and Saturday, March 8 and 9 brought together clubs from throughout the area.

“We cover over 13,000 square miles,” she explained. “The district meeting is where we invite everybody in the district, we usually get the people just close to us because some people don’t want to drive two and a half hours.”

Each region – the Yosemite area, the mountain area and the Stanislaus-San Joaquin area – play host to a district meeting throughout the year, Miller added.

District 4-A1 will also have a convention in May, meeting at Black Oak Casino in Tuolumne.

“Lions are the largest humanitarian service organization in the world,” said Miller. “Our motto is ‘We serve’ and so we do lots of hands on service projects in our communities.”

She said clubs have also been challenged to expand their membership, hoping to reach 1.5 million members worldwide by 2027.

The Friday-Saturday meeting was hosted at the Escalon Community Center and included plenty of training opportunities and networking for attendees.

With the theme of ‘Changing the World’ in effect for 2024, Miller said it all starts at the local level.

“You’re changing the world by helping your community, because you’re a part of the world,” she said.

Also coming more into focus, the Leo Clubs, designed for the younger generation. There are Alpha Leo Clubs for those ages 13 to 18, and the Leo Omega Clubs, for those 18 to 30-years-old. Miller said local clubs can sponsor an Omega Club for $100, effectively taking care of the dues for the group.

She also said believes one of the things that helps Lions Clubs be successful is the ability for each club to forge its own path within the framework of the organization.

“We have eight initiatives and a club can choose what they want to do and how they want to do it,” she noted. “They can do what their community needs.”

Those eight initiatives are: Vision, Environment, Diabetes, Childhood Cancer, Hunger, Youth, Humanitarian and Disaster.