22/02/2015 – Today is our last day in Kathmandu. We can not believe that this great time is going to end soon! Our LEO friends took us back close to the Kings-College where we met the LEO club yesterday, but today we’ll be meeting another LEO club of Kathmandu and will be attending a regular club meeting.
LEO Club Bhaktapur Dibyaswori and Kathmandu Cindrella LEO CLUB welcomed us to their club meeting room and they let us be part of an official meeting. They took it very serious and made the beginning as well the schedule very official – which was great, because I never could experience the whole scale of international meeting guidelines.
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After a while and introducing ourselves we got deep into an interesting discussion: The LEOs (also disctrict-wide) wish to gain more independency from Lions as a brand. They claim, that they depend very much on Lions, but do a lot of work themselves. So they wish to be able to own their own money which will help them to organize projects and activities on their own. It was pretty interesting and long lasting discussion, because it it’s a real matter to them.
I personally think that LEOs should be still seen as activity of Lions as well as treated like this but should not become an own, independent brand. Yes, still a lot of people do not know the LEOs although they know Lions, but that only means, that Lions should also put more effort into merchandising the LEO-brand. LEOs do a great job and this should be honored by integrating them into Lions-activities as well as Lions related communication or marketing.
In Austria the LEOs attended a so called „fair for volunteering“ (read this article about it). This fair gave institutions the chance to present themselves to the public. So LEOs Austria also took part and we spent two days there to explain people what LEO is and what we do. Many people did not know „LEO“. After we told them, that we are an activity of Lions they were really astonished. So attending such events is just one great opportunity to show what LEO is and what we do. You should do the same in your district or country!
What’s your opinion about this topic?
Should LEOs gain more independency from Lions? Let us know in the comments below!
The meeting in pictures