On May 2, Whitehall High School Leo Club members were treated to a special dinner by Whitehall Lions Club.

Lions Club International is the largest service club organization in the world. With more than 1.4 million members, the Lions Club performs valuable services to areas around the globe and is an organization that believes “a community is what we make it.”

The Lions Club is the parent organization to the Leo Club, a program dedicated to give young people the opportunity to serve their communities while making a positive impact.

In order to be a Lions Club member, one needs to be over the age of 18, but Leo club members can include people from the age of a middle school student on up to 18. The letters in Leo stand for Leadership, Experience and Opportunity, as those words are the backbone for every young member who joins the club.

Fifteen members of the Leo Club were in attendance, all females varying in age, but all were equally excited to be there. The evening began with the dinner and a meet and greet at the Zentz Center, located inside Fellowship Community, Whitehall.

Afterward, Leo Club member Lana Huynh gave a presentation she did back in October 2015 for Eye Injury Prevention Month. The presentation was to show Lions Club members the hard work that goes into some of the Leo Club members’ activities. The presentation detailed the different types of injuries one can have, the places most commonly associated with eye injuries and ways to prevent and treat eye injuries.

After the presentation, each member of the Leo Club got up to the microphone and introduced themselves. They gave their name, grade, future goals and favorite moment they had from the Leo Club during the school year. Such activities discussed included the schools blood drive, Bowl-a-Thon, a walk for multiple sclerosis (MS), Pennies for the Blind and the Zephyr games.

The most-talked-about activities were that of the walk for MS and the Zephyr games. The walk for MS took place recently and had the Leo Club members feeling proud as the day took place on a cold, rainy morning, while the Zephyr games was a club ritual that involved the members spending time with special needs students of Whitehall High School. It is there they played games while getting to know students they don’t necessarily see on a regular basis.

Many of the students loved the different opportunities presented to them through the Leo Club and would gladly do it over again in a heartbeat. Lions Club President Judy Ott stated, “It is wonderful to hear about the service projects that the students take part in, and we hope that they continue on their hard work after high school and beyond.”

The night ended on a light-hearted tradition as both Lions Club and Leo Club members told bad jokes to one another that ranged from all different types of pun-style jokes. Jokes varied from “What kind of bagel can fly? A plain bagel” to “I’m reading a novel about anti-gravity; I can’t put it down.” An inside joke even popped up during the session in which people would say “please laugh” before telling a new bad joke.

The sense of pride and accomplishment in everyone’s face was enough to know the Lions and Leo Club members enjoy the work they do.