Local area Lions Clubs sponsored contestants in a March 9th competition to award prize money and select vocalists and instrumentalists to advance to state level competition.  This is the Virginia Lions “James A. Bland Music Scholarship Competition.”  The Fairfax Lions Club had held a competition in January and selected 2 contestants for scholarship awards from our club and to advance to last night’s event.

For information on the Bland Contest, see:  Lions of Virginia Bland Music Scholarship Foundation

The March 9th event was wonderful competition:  13 instrumental and vocalist competitors performed beautifully.  The quality of the competition was high, and a panel of judges worked hard to select winners.

The Fairfax Lions Club sponsored performing artists are in the photo below.  They were not selected to advance, they were superb.  We thank them for doing their best, and thank Lion Jeff Root for chairing our Bland contest activity.

The Fairfax Lions Club was established on February 21, 1951.  We are proud to continue to serve our community, neighbors and those in need around the world for 65 years.   We do a lot simply by volunteering our time; but our major accomplishments are made possible by donations and fund raising activities which you in our community support.  For example, our most recent major fund raiser was our citrus fruit sale, March 3-5, 2016.  We hold 3 fuit sales each year (November, December, and March).   Those fruit sales generate about 80% of our total charity programs budget.  If you bought fruit from us (or maple syrup or peanuts) at our recent March sale, you helped us support several local youth programs, solve many people’s vision problems with special needs equipoment and eyeglasses, provide holiday meals to local needy families, provide medial assistance to underprivileged persons in Vietnam and Ehtiopia, support the Fairfax City senior center and patients in a nursing home and the Lamb Center, grant scholorships to veterans, and pay for research to cure diabetes and hearing loss.  We thank our community for making all this possible.

Thank you – Fairfax neighbors – for helping us be a successful service club for 65 years.

NEXT FRUIT SALE:  NOV 17-19, 2016 (week before Thanksgiving)

Rocky Run middle school student Jasmin Yoon has been named a merit award winner in the 28^th  annual Lions International Peace Poster Contest.   Jasmin’s winning poster was chosen for its originality, artistic merit and portrayal of this year’s theme “Share Peace.” She is one of 23 merit award winners chosen from approximately 400,000 entries drawn by children ages 11 to 13 from 65 countries.

As a merit award winner, Jasmin will be presented with a cash award of $500 and a certificate of achievement by the Fairfax Lions Club, local sponsor of the contest.  Each year, Fairfax Lions sponsor local youth in the Peace Poster Contest, intended to foster a spirit of peace and international understanding in young people worldwide.  In both local and state judging of contest entries, Jasmin won other cash awards.

Fairfax Lions are proud of Jasmin for her abilities and accomplishments, as we are of all local youth who submit entries for the contest.

The Fairfax Lions Club awarded this year $1000 to support vision impaired children in Vietnam.  Global Comunity Service Foundation reports progress:

Skill training for 15 visually impaired children from Quang Tri Blind School was initiated before Lunar New Year in Vietnam. It includes two main components:

• Training on food making
• Training on incense making

The objective of these two types of training are:

• To equip the children with skills on making basic food that can serve in the family
• To provide them with a vocational skill in incense making
• To build confidence for the children in doing cooking at home in order to support their family
• To change the behavior of the parents towards the children
• To prepare them with a job skill for their future

The project will last for 2 months with the first months dealing with food making and the second for incense making.

At the moment, the first component was initiated with some food made for Tet (Vietnamese New Year). The teachers taught the children on making pickles from papaya, chili, carrot and mustard green. The process includes washing, cutting, bottling and cleaning up. The children were very excited to take part in this training since they did not think they could do the cooking before. This training will repeat for one month to make sure the children are able to master the process and can perform it back home with assistance from family members.

The next component will be implemented in March for incense making training.

On Feb 6 and 7, the Fairfax Lions Club participated in Fairfax City’s Chocolate Lover’s Festival.  We met many neighbors in our community, and provided free vision screening for adults and children.  Our table was located in the Fairfax City Library.  We used the “Spot Vision Screener” – a handheld, portable device to quickly and easily detect vision issues on people from age 6 months to adult.  We screened 103 people (including 59 children) and referred 19 for follow-up to address vision issues.  It was a grat day for Fairfax Lions to help serve our community.

Vision screening in action: 

Volunteer Lions:

Fairfax Lions dinner meeting program on Jan 19 was about Foster Care.

Our speakers were Ms Melissa Tatlor, and Ms Jacyln Arenas of First Home Care.  They are dedicated to providing therapeutic foster care services and adoption services to children who need placement out of their homes into stable, supportive, and nurturing environments.

We learned there are about 250 foster children in Fairfax County, and about 5000 in VA.  The children come from a diverse background and have been removed from their homes due to abuse or neglect. Being removed from their home creates a sense of loss, confusion, and is overall a traumatic experience. They are in dire need of a trusting, stable and nurturing home in order to heal from the trauma and build a brighter future.

Who can be a therapeutic foster or adoptive parent? To be considered eligible to become a therapeutic foster parent, a person must be: An adult, age 21 years or older; A resident of Virginia; Financially stable; Able to provide adequate living space for a child; Able to pass child abuse and criminal history clearance; Available to attend all required training; and Willing to learn to work with children who have emotional and behavioral challenges.

For more information http://www.firsthomecare.com/