Call usOUR RECENT CLUB PRESIDENTS:
Our Club President 2024/25 - Lion Rocco Zottarelli
Many congratulations to Lion Rocco (pictured right) who is our new Club President for the next 12 months effective 1st July 2024.
"It is an honour to be the Club President and build on the successes of the Club lead by my predecessor Kam. My principal aim for the forthcoming period is to focus on growing our membership. With more hands we can do so much more work in the community."
Rocco Zottarelli
Read Lions Club CIO Trustee & President.
Our Club President 2023/24 - Lion Kamaljit (Kam) Kundhi
Many congratulations to Lion Kam who is our new Club President for the next 12 months effective 1st July 2023.
"I look forward to serving the Reading Lions Club and continuing all the good work we do in the community. Our challenges in the post-covid era remain and I will continue, with the support from the club, to develop and focus on fundraising, youth engagement, and the community. Most importantly to continue the Lions Club ethos of working for and with the community to make a difference."
Kamaljit Singh Kundhi
Reading Lions President & Trustee / Safety Officer / Equipment Officer
Our Club President 2022/2023 - Lion Ian Henderson
Many co
ngratulations to Lion Ian who is our new Club President for the next 12 months effective 1st July 2022.
"I look forward to this next year, working with and for you, to continue to support local good causes. I will continue my role as Membership lead and working with Lion Sarah, will be our clubs contact with our Friends of Reading Lions and will do our best to encourage new members and work hard to retain our current members. My two main areas of focus will be Membership & Community Engagement."
Best regards, Lion President Ian.
(Lion President Ian (left) pictured with 1st Vice President Kam (centre) and Immediate Past President Andy (right)
Our Club President 2021 / 2022 - Lion Andy Young
Many congratulations to Lion Andy who was inaugurated as our Club President for the next 12 months effective 1st July 2021.
Our congratulations go to Lion President Andy on receiving his Melvin Jones Award in recognition of his achievements with our humanitarian efforts during the covid pandemic.
Our Club President 2020/2021 - Lion Sarah Kidd-May
Many congratulations to Lion Sarah who was inaugurated as our Club President for the 12 months, effective on 1st July 2020. As we cannot physically meet socially because of Covid-19 we held a 'virtual' handover and Sarah and our outgoing President Lion Dave Ebsworth met in the open air to handover the chain of office, suitably social distanced.
Our Club President 2019 / 2020
A message from our outgoing Cub President, Lion Dave 'Ebbo' Ebsworth
" As I come to the end of my year as President of the Lions Club of Reading, I want to say a very big 'thank you' to you for your support in volunteering to help the Lions during the COVID-19 pandemic.
In April this year, a month into 'lockdown' found us facing some unprecedented challenges as a charity. Like thousands of others, we have been unable to carry out our usual fundraising activities, but we felt we couldn't just stand by and watch our local community struggle, especially as so many needed our support. After some discussion we came up with the idea of using our Christmas float to try and gather food donations to give to our local food banks as we knew they were in desperate need.
We adorned our float with rainbows and banners and then once a week we decided to go round some of the usual Christmas routes we do in December, hoping to collect food for the homeless that we could donate to our local food banks. Originally we thought we would try this for a couple of weeks, not knowing how successful it would be or how we would be able to manage the logistics of such an event with social distancing etc. However, we were overwhelmed by the support the first week, it was incredible!
Not only that, we have been able to carry on with our weekly collections in and around Reading, putting leaflets through doors on the route we are going to take the following week and posting on various social media platforms. This has been a huge success and as I write this, we have completed seven food collections in and around Reading collecting in excess of £15,000 of food to donate to our local food banks. We are currently supporting three local charities, New Beginnings, CCA Whitley and Readifood, who are extremely grateful for our support as the need for their services has increased dramatically over the last few months and continues to do so.
We have also been grateful for the help from our local community, who have pulled together to make this possible. In addition to our members, volunteers have come forward to help deliver leaflets, be a food donation point, collect food donations, help sort the food donations after the collection rounds and then deliver them to the respective charities. Our local community has been so generous, giving us much needed food week in, week out. We have also had support from local businesses such as Waitrose and Zottadeli, for which we have been very thankful."
Best wishes, Lion Dave Ebsworth.
Our Club President - 2018/2019
A few words from our Lion Paul Gibbons:
"June 2018 was the 100 year's anniversary since the start of Lions clubs across the world. It is a great honour to be President of the Reading Lions as we commence our next 100 years.
Last year we raised over £34,000 through fundraising and donations, much of which has been used hear in Reading's local community. In particular, our Prostate Awareness event held in May where over 2,400 men had a free PSA blood test, was our most well attended to date.
This year our aim is to continue with the fundraising events such as our Fireworks, Tribute Night and Santa's Sleigh. In order to continue to be a successful club of dedicated people, who all give their time for free, I want to increase our presence both in the local and online communities, and strive to increase our Lions numbers to reflect our local community and to sustain this successful club into the future, whilst having fun."
Lion President Paul Gibbons - July 2018.
