List of Charities

Harpenden Lions supports a wide variety of charities with the funds raised from the generosity of local donors. Around £400,000 has been raised by the Club since its formation in 1981.

Donations are given to organisations in three categories, local, national and international.

Local covers charities, organisations and individuals involved in charitable activities such as assisting aid projects. National UK charities are supported by donations and international organisations benefit too. Funds are also sent for specific disaster relief funds.

The list indicates the diversity of the donations.

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Grove House Day Hospice

Web site: http://www.grove-house.org.uk

Grove House is a day hospice which provides free specialist care and support to people in St Albans, Harpenden and the Hemel Hempstead area whose lives are affected by cancer or another life-threatening illness.

The dedicated staff at Grove House strongly believes that everyone who needs it has the right to access specialist care to have the best possible quality of life. The team helps to alleviate symptoms such as pain or some of the feelings of fear, helplessness, loneliness and vulnerability that come with a life threatening-illness.

The specialist trained staff at Grove House recognise that everyone has different needs. The range of high quality services are therefore individually adapted and optimised to benefit patients, families, carers and health professionals. Care and support, which is free, is provided both at Grove House and at home as applicable.

Grove House relies entirely on donations to provide its services.

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Sue Ryder Care, Stagenhoe

Web site: Sue Ryder Care Stagenhoe

Sue Ryder Care provides residential care for adults with complex neurological conditions. It is based close to Harpenden in an old country house in attractive grounds at Stagenhoe which is near St Paul's Walden and is close to Hitchin.

There are 45 beds for the adults living at Stagenhoe with conditions including Huntington's Disease, Multiple Sclerosis, Parkinson's Disease, Brain Injury and Stroke. Services offered include nursing, respite care, physiotherapy and recreational therapy.

The highly trained and dedicated staff provide a caring and safe environment that recognises each person as a unique individual.

Although partially government funded the Stagenhoe Sue Ryder Care facility relies on donations to maintain much of the services provided.

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Send a Cow

http://www.sendacow.org.uk Well worth looking at the web site - ensure your speakers are turned on.

Founded in 1988, Send a Cow enables poor farmers in Africa to become self-reliant by providing them with livestock, training and advice. Work with some of the most vulnerable groups in Africa, including children orphaned by war, families affected by AIDS, and disabled people.

Send a Cow mission: to enable poor rural families in Africa to attain food and livelihood security, by developing strong community groups and sustainable agricultural systems which integrate crops and livestock.

During the year ended 30 June 2006, Send a Cow worked with over 300 community groups, delivered training in group dynamics and sustainable agriculture to over 5,000 farmers and provided appropriate livestock to 1,450 of these farmers.

Total income was £5.4M, admin / cost of generating income <£1.2M.

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WaterAid

Web site: http://www.wateraid.org

Specifically about Lions connection: http://www.wateraid.org/uk/get_involved/community_groups/professional_groups/lions/default.asp

WaterAid is a registered charity, number 288701:

• Dedicated exclusively to the provision of safe clean domestic water, sanitation and hygiene education to the world’s poorest people in Africa, Asia and the Pacific Rim.
• Helps a million people each year gain access to water.
• Works with local partners in country programmes to ensure aid reaches the poorest and most marginalised members of the community.

These most basic services are essential to life; without them vulnerable communities are trapped in the stranglehold of disease and poverty.

Materials are provided to villages to enable the well to be built with as much local labour and input as possible in order to achieve local pride of ownership of the facility.

A well will provide clean water near to or in a village to avoid the carriage of infested, dirty water sometime from many miles away.

Donations from Lions Clubs go towards Water Aid’s work in Malawi and Nepal.

£400 pays for an improved shallow well fitted with a hand pump in Malawi or Nepal.

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Lions Sightsavers Eye Care Programme

Sightsavers International: Lions donations are routed through: Sightsavers International - Royal Commonwealth Society for the Blind Registered Charity Number 207544

Web site: http://www.sightsavers.org/default.asp

Millions of people in developing countries go blind for lack of simple treatment. Millions more stay blind for lack of simple surgery or are excluded because of their disability.

• 37 million people in the world are blind.
• Nine out of ten blind people live in the developing world.
• 75% of global blindness can be prevented or cured.
• 153 million people are severely visually impaired for the want of a pair of glasses.

Sightsavers’ vision is a world in which no-one is needlessly blind and where everyone who is irreversibly blind or severely visually impaired enjoys the same rights, responsibilities and opportunities as people who are sighted.

Sightsavers is dedicated to combating blindness in developing countries, primarily in the Commonwealth, by working with partner organisations in the poor and the least served communities to support ongoing activities that prevent and cure blindness, restore sight and provide education and training for people who are blind.

Lions Sight Savers Eye Care Programme:

• Running for 30 years.
• Originally eye operations were carried out in the back of Land Rovers or in huts but conditions have improved and now those requiring treatment are taken to hospitals.

Large numbers were coming for examinations - some were blind or had untreatable conditions, meaning they would go blind. The previous ‘Eye Camp’ arrangements did not cater for those persons.

• Incurably blind children will be given assistance to attend ordinary schools.
• There will be access to rehabilitation training for incurably blind adults.
• Communities will be provided with education in preventing eye disease and recognising treatable eye conditions at an early stage.

Lions Clubs’ donations support these integrated services of eye care, education and rehabilitation within a specific community of approximately 0.5 to 2.5 million people.

A share of a CES is £250 - donations are restricted to a partner / hospital chosen by Sightsavers in India.

Reports are issued to Clubs identifying the ‘medical’ partner and give results of the last twelve months. Harpenden Lions Club’s last donation was in November 2006 for £250 - a report was provided in May 2007 (available).

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