Mandan Dacotah Lions members (l-r) Pat Vannett, Kevin Vannett and Steve Moore keep busy serving food to people attending the summer bandshell concert at Dykshoorn Park. The Lions serve food each Tuesday night and donate the proceeds back into the community. Brian L. Gray photo

By Brian L. Gray

The Mandan Dacotah Lions has recently been awarded the honor of Lions Club of the Year.

The honor was bestowed upon the organization by the Lions Club International’s 5NW District, which represents the western third portion of the state. The Dacotah Lions was among 37 clubs in the region eligible for the award.

Soon after being presented that honor, the organization was then named the club of the year for the MD5 region, which represents nine Lions districts based in North Dakota, South Dakota and Saskatchewan, Canada.

The governor of the 5NW District, Kevin Vannett, said the Dacotah Lions was selected at the local level based on a point system that looks at member involvement and working with youth.

The Dacotah Lions Club is credited for holding Bismarck-Mandan’s first Diabetes Strides Walk, an event held earlier this summer.

It also holds several fundraisers throughout the year, including the Lions Eye Bank, where Lions members collect used glasses and send them to people in other nations in need of them. This year, over 2,300 glasses were collected.

During the summer, the Lions also sell grilled burgers and bratwursts and refreshments each Tuesday evening during the Mandan Bandshell Summer Concert Series at Dykshoorn Park, and the profits earned from sales are distributed back into the community. “Once the summer is over, the Lions get together to define how to spend the profits from it, and decide where the money should go back into,” says Herman Schafer, president of the Dacotah Lions.

All of the proceeds earned from events like this go into helping others. One such program the Lions donate to is a summer camp geared toward young people that suffer from diabetes, called Camp Sioux. Other profits go to help with environmental projects, assisting families who have suffered from tragedies and making various donations to those in need.

Diabetes is an issue the Dacotah Lions have begun to place their focus on. Vannett himself suffers from diabetes, which is a condition that often leads to blindness later in life. One project the organization is planning in the future is to purchase several low vision machines, which are projectors that help people with vision problems read more easily.

The Lions own two low vision machines right now, which cost anywhere from $3,500 to $4,000 to purchase. Plans are, at this point, to build a library of these machines, where people will be able to rent them whenever they are needed.

Vannett said he is unable to drive anymore due to the vision difficulties caused by his diabetes, but the machines allow him to remain employed. “It’s helped me to maintain my job at State Fleet, where I’ve been for 27 years,” he said.

Schafer said the organization is pleased with the accolade, but the members know there is still more work that can be done. “We’re only a five-year-old club. We’ve done a lot of things where we tried to help people where we could,” he said. “Our goal is to do several projects that  are community service-minded.”

Membership for the Dacotah Lions is now at 32, a number that has grown by eight members since last fall.

The organization also has a group for youth members, the Mandan Leos. The Lions raise money to assist youth in the community, by way of scholarships and other programs.

The work the Dacotah Lions do, Schafer says, is simply a small piece of the pie. “We’re just a little club out of the 205 countries that have a Lions organization. Not many people know it, but the Lions is a huge organization, with about 1.3 million members around the world,” Schafer said.