General News
1 October, 2025
Final preparations for Lions convention
A huge mob of Lions Club volunteers from across south-west Victoria will descend on Stawell in November for one of the biggest dates on the Lions Club calendar.
Organisers for the 49th Annual Lions District 201V2 Convention met at Stawell Entertainment Centre on Tuesday making final preparations for the three-day convention set for November 7 to 9.
Well-known local Lions volunteer Jo Richie from Ararat, who’s been helping Stawell’s Lions Club navigate though its recent rebuilding process, is excited to see the convention coming to Stawell.
“It means an influx of people for the weekend,” said Ms Richie, “Hopefully full motel rooms, and lots of eating and drinks, and we’re encouraging people to do the local op-shops in preparation for the gala dinner.”
Lions District 201V2 Governor, Susan Eyton from Lara Lions Club, chuckled when asked what she’d like to share with the community about the upcoming event.
“Do we apologise in advance?” Ms Eyton said with a smile, “We’re all a little bit crazy really, we always have a lot of fun, I think that’s one of the things about Lions, one of our key things is having fun while we’re doing service activities and working together.
“So they can expect some lovely people coming in from all walks of life, enjoying Stawell for the weekend.”
Convention chairperson Lee-Ann Anselmo, who hails from Lions Point Cook, has a lot on her plate as the event draws near.
“We’ve got the program finalised for the three days,” Ms Anselmo said, “There’s some really good guest speakers coming in including our national service coordinator who’ll be coming and talking to everyone about various service projects and how the clubs can get more involved in the different projects.”
“We have a speaking coming from an organisation called Big Group Hug who work with foster children, and we’ll be doing a hands-on service activity with them on the Saturday afternoon, packing care packages.
“We also have a speaker coming from the Halls Gap Zoo, that we’ve asked to come and speak to us about what happened during the bushfires and who they’ve recovered, obviously we had quite a bit of involvement up here post-fires so we’re keen to know how everyone’s doing after that.”
There’ll be several opportunities for locals to interact with the visiting Lions Club volunteers over the course of the weekend, including an initiative aimed at reducing the risk of having number plates stolen from cars.
“We’re going to do a safe number plate day,” said the District Governor, Ms Eyton, “Jo set it all up, basically it’s changing the screws on the number plates to make sure that they can’t easily be taken off.
“It’s a free service, we’re going to have a team out there working doing that on the Saturday afternoon in the Woolworths carpark.”
The convention chairperson, Ms Anselmo said a few extra sets of hands from the Stawell community could come in handy putting together care packages for good causes.
“We’re doing a service activity at Neighbourhood House, that’s where we’ll be packing the hampers for Big Group Hug and Project Platypus, so we’d love for people to come along and help with that,’ said Ms Anselmo.
“We’ll be doing that from 2.30pm on Saturday afternoon until 4.30pm, and we’d love people from the Stawell community to come along and say hello, and maybe give us a hand, it’d be great.”
Ms Anselmo added that all weekend, Lions Club would welcome any curious locals who wanted to pop into the convention to find out more about the good work Lions do in the community.
“There is an opportunity too, for people to come in and see the display booths we’ll have set up on all of the service projects that we undertake,” she said, “They’re absolutely welcome to come in, have a wander around, ask questions.
“We love answering questions, we just love talking about Lions.”
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