Throughout the year, we’ve continued with one of our signature service projects called the “Kwik Trip Food Rescue”. Each week we do two food pickups at Kwik Trip and deliver them to the Marshall/ Waterloo Food Pantry. During the Food Pantry year, we delivered a total of 3,737 lbs. of food! It helps them feed the community members in need.
In March, our board of directors brainstormed and came up with the idea of a service project during the pandemic. We call it the “Marshall Lions Food Delivery Program”. We partner with the Waterloo Piggly Wiggly and the Food Pantry to deliver groceries to community members who are food insecure or have immune system issues and aren’t able to go out and pickup themselves. During the summer months, we worked with area Social Workers and made deliveries for the Food Pantries from Waterloo and Sun Prairie. This service project continues today as we are up to 106 total deliveries with 8 out of the last 10 being families in Covid 19 quarantine. For this service, our Lions club was recognized with both the 27 D-1 Service Project of the Year, and the MD27 State Lions Service Award!
In Spring and Fall, we did our “Adopt a Highway” cleanup along Highway 19 from Marshall to Drover’s Woods. It was a bit different this year as the Marshall EMS had to opt out because of Covid 19. Our team picked up the slack and made sure everything looked spiffy.
In May, the Scholarship committee received many applications from graduating seniors. We were happy to announce that we were awarding 11 students with continuing education scholarships.
In August we ran a “Curbside Brat & Burger Fry” along with a “Stuff the Bus” event. We had tremendous support from the community. We collected $1539.31 retail value school supplies along with an additional $1070.00 in cash towards the project. Many members participated and did a tremendous job!
During the month of September, we were contacted by the Marshall School Nurse. We provided eye glasses for two students, one at the middle school, and one at the high school.
In September, we became aware of a need we discovered on the Next-Door social media platform and took action. A disabled Marshall gentleman was looking for help to complete a roof project on his home before winter arrived. He had worked on it some himself but was limited what he could do with his disability. He had materials purchased, but was running out of time to complete the daunting task and asked for help. Our Lions members stepped into action and completed the project in time for winter.
October brought on our annual “Halloween” event and our “Coats for Kids” drive. While it was scaled back this year with the Pandemic, we were still able to provide safely for the kids. They needed something to break up the monotony of being stuck at home. We served over 225 kids during the event. Coats for Kids collected some slightly used coats, hats, mittens, and boots for their drive. This year our club donated $3500.00 to the Coats for Kids drive. We were able to obtain many used coats, hats, mittens from Lake Mills Cleaners. They were kind enough to donate the cleaning too. All said, we donated a market value of about $8000.00 in coats, hats, boots, and mittens to both the Marshall and Waterloo School Districts.
October was also the month for our annual Fish Stocking program. We installed 250 Walleye and 250 Crappie into the mighty Maunasha River. As you know, this aids in our annual Fisheree Event. We will concentrate on stocking pan fish into the near future.
November was our time to partner with the Deerfield Club on the Wisconsin Lions Eye Bank Donor Tissue Runs. There was a total of 8 runs with our club doing 3 of those.
Also, in November, we installed our freshly refurbished “Used Eye Glasses Drop Off Box” at Lions Park. Thank you to all that helped on this project. We were able to donate 690 used pairs of glasses and 3 hearing aids that were dropped off at Lions Camp.
This month we are currently working with Marshall Schools on a project called “Adopt a Child”. We participate in this every year. We work with them and donate money for gift cards to middle and high school aged kids who are facing financial hardships. We are pleased to announce we will be donating $2500.00 to this project!