Our History

Where it all began…

Lions Clubs International was formed in 1917 by a Chicago business leader, Melvin Jones, who wondered what would happen if people put their talents to work improving their communities. As a result of his inspiration, 1.4 million men and women today are members of the world’s largest service club association with thousands of members based in hundreds of clubs throughout the British Isles.

As part of Lions Clubs International’s Centennial celebration in 2017/18, Lions around the world adopted the message: Where there’s a need, there’s a Lion, and worked to achieve a remarkable Centennial Service Challenge by serving over 240 million people worldwide.

First Lions Club in the UK

It was thanks to the support of Canadian Lions – and the intervention of Her Late Majesty Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, that the first Lions club in London was founded in 1950.

Canadian Lions had provided invaluable support for children orphaned in the Second World War. To thank them, the then Queen sent her equerry Colonel Edward Wyndham (later Lord Leconfield) to Canada. He was so impressed that Windsor (Ontario) Lions Club agreed to sponsor the first London club, with Lord Leconfield as its founding Charter President.

Lions link to Helen Keller

Helen Keller was born on June 27, 1880, in Tuscumbia, Alabama.

As a child, she contracted an illness that left her permanently blind and deaf. She had no cognitive impairments from the illness and was already learning to communicate using hand signals, but Keller’s parents doubted her capacity for a typical education.

When Helen was six, she was matched with Anne Sullivan, a teacher of the blind who helped her better communicate by interpreting hand signals pressed into her palm. Keller learned to read and write Braille, to lip-read by touching people’s mouths during their speech, to use a typewriter, and to even speak verbally.

She was well-known in the United States by age sixteen—and by the time she became the first deaf-blind person to graduate college years later, she was internationally famous. Still, members of the public doubted that a deaf-blind person could really be so accomplished, and some news outlets sought to discredit her as a thinker because they were uncomfortable with her socialist politics.

By publishing books about her life, lecturing around the world, fundraising for the education of the disabled, and even piloting an airplane, Helen Keller helped eliminate some of the social stigma surrounding disability and educated the  public regarding deaf-blind and she could no longer be left unacknowledged. Helen Keller asked Lions to become Knights of the Blind in this crusade against darkness?

In 1971, the Board of Directors of Lions Clubs International declared that June 1 would be remembered as Helen Keller Day. Lions around the world implement sight-related service projects on Helen Keller Day. 

Today in the UK there are 600 Lions Clubs around the country with a Headquarters in Birmingham – all providing a service to their communities. HRH The Duchess of Edinburgh is a member of the Wokingham Lions Club and Royal Patron of the Lions Clubs of the British Isles. The support of the Countess has included carrying out the opening ceremony for the Lions shelter at the National Memorial Arboretum and attending the Lions Diamond celebrations in Leeds.