Last week I had the opportunity to speak with the Rockdale Rotary Club during their regular meeting. I have had the opportunity to speak with multiple service clubs all over the county and I am always excited to have the opportunity to speak to so many people who do so much for our communities. In the past these clubs tended to have substantial memberships, but modern times and the many things that are available to do both in person and via homebound entertainment have weakened many of these fine institutions.
Of course, there are groups that are church-based and veteran-based which do enormously essential work throughout the community. They also fall into these community service areas, but today I wanted to discuss the two groups that have some prominence in our area. The Rotary Clubs and the Lions Clubs are open to the public in general and do an outstanding job of helping our communities through the organizational level and through the various local issues they seem to take on.
On the organizational level, each club has its special area of concern that they work on. For the Rotary Clubs that is the global polio prevention, clean water issues and education to name a few. For the Lions Club, their large area global focus is on issues like vision, childhood cancer and diabetes to name a few. Both of these groups are international bodies with clubs all over the world; as such, they share common goals including environmental issues, hunger issues and youth intervention issues.
On the local level each of these clubs do tremendous things throughout the communities. Firstly, regardless of their location in Milam County, these clubs work to help our youth through scholarships and other programs that can help them out with their futures after high school be it either in college or in the workforce. Each of these organizations also includes youth services with youth clubs and camps for the kids.
These clubs also work on local projects which help the communities in various ways including donating books to local libraries, help at our senior centers, volunteering with food distribution and food pantry programs, sponsoring events such as the Milam County Moot Court Competition and by participating in other local events throughout the community. Then there are specific projects each club works on and for example take the recent improvements to the city park in Cameron.
The Cameron Lions Club recently began their project to refurbish the city park in Cameron and this last weekend they dedicated the refurbishments to the tennis courts with the inclusion of eight pickleball courts and renamed it the Rickey Williams Memorial Courts. In the next few weeks, they will add a new barbecue pit and begin work on refurbishing the playground equipment and other improvements to make the park safer and more accessible for public use. While this is the current project that the Cameron Lions is working on, each club has their own projects and are always looking for future projects to improve their communities.
Obviously, there is a lot of good that comes from these organizations as well as the other community service organizations as well, but they all need our help, and they need our participation. So, take some time and get to know someone in one of these clubs and consider being a part of the group. There is a lot of service that each of our communities needs and while not any one person can do it all, each of us should try and do a little and these organizations provide just the vehicle for each of us to do our part.
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