Welcome to LEO Clubs International

In the start up discussion with IP Al Brandel and his staff, the ILOs where offering their help for the organization of the 3rd Leo Global Conference 2009 Minneapolis and to present themselves at the next international board meeting. Further, the Leos got the invitation to participate on the annual leadership institute seminars of LCI. In next year's February two Leos from Europe will have the chance to participate there. Strong support for the European Leonism was coming from ID Hayri Ülgen, ID Tapani Rahko and PDG Barbara Grewe. The low amount of Alpha Leos (Compared to the US) was stated as a main difference between European and international Leonism. Resulting, it was clear for everybody that the European organization has to be seen in a different way and the European Leos offered to investigate possible synergies between the two Leo generations, among others for the 3rd Leo Global Conference.

The project "they are among us" was presented by its initiator Dennis Leroy more in detail. Mainly, this venture is about giving blind people the possibility to participate on (music) festivals. The first try was done in Luxembourg. The ILOs were very sophisticated and some countries will support this event and arrange it in their places.

As a general topic, the ILOs were requested to pay more attention on the submittals of the annual reports and to support their Ds/MDs with the annual registration procedure.

In between the topic of the next Central and Eastern European Workshop (CEEW) in Bulgaria rose: The Bulgarian orga-team wanted to hold this workshop in the middle of November in Sofia but due to the fact that there were too many other events at that time and that it was announced too short-termed, the ILO council suggested to shift this event to 2009. A new proposal will follow.

An ongoing topic was to activate contacts to non-ILO countries. Several ILOs in charge were defined. Concerning new members of the ILO board it was agreed that the new ILOs have to be trained by the old, advanced ones and that the focus should now be more laid on the ones who are not continuously participating on meetings and/or workshops to gain their motivation again. Some general topics like keeping the Yahoogroup up to date, new international events, and administrative stuff were rounding the agenda.

The templates group made a very good progress and finished the presentation of "Leo Club International to Youth Campers". The next template to be revised will be the "How to create a district" one, because there are some new Leo countries who have the need for this information.

Due to the fact that the international Leo website group was overloaded with work, some new volunteers are now supporting the team. The ILO board agreed that every ILO will open a discussion forum topic and that some ILOs will write initial articles on the webpage. All other ILOs, all Leo countries and all Leos are requested to post topics and write articles for our homepage.

As latest news from Lions Clubs International (LCI) the actual Leo of the year, Thomas H. Minichmayr from Leo Clubs Wels (Austria) was mentioned. Further, various new marketing/branding projects were shown (like training tools for Leos, Promotion Innovation, Effective Public Speaking, Member Motivation, and suchlike). LCI asked for presenting the Euromed Leo system (based on ILOs) to the international board to get a better understanding of the European Leo organization.

Finally, the new ILO of Denmark, Alexander Bergström, invited all Leos and Leo friends to the 25th birthday party of the Danish Leo Club Aarhus at May 2nd, 2009.

All in all it was it was a very successful meeting where the Leos got in closer contact with the Lions International Board, where the European Leos moved one step forward to the acceptance of our international organizational structure of ILOs, and last but not least we once again strengthened our cross-boarder friendship!

Peter H. Hofer
ILO- MD 114 AUSTRIA
Secretary EuroMed ILO Council