Christmas Food Appeal

Christmas Appeal 2021
Success!! - over €25,000 raised

In 2021, our Annual Christmas Appeal took a 3 pronged approach:

We started early this year with our Christmas Card Project. They went on sale in October ... see separate page ... Sold out mid December.
Our Christmas Activity Challenge took place on the 4th and 5th December, - see our photos on Facebook. See text and video below.
Our Christmas Food Appeal took place on 17th and 18th December - See text and photos below.
We are extraordinarily grateful to the Parents' Association of St. Oliver Plunkett National School who made an amazing donation of €9,400 raised from their 'Walk in Santa's Boots' project.

Walk in Santa's Boots!
From 17th November until 17th December the pupils from St Oliver Plunkett NS once again took on a 12,000km virtual walk to Lapland via the North Pole and back.
The purpose of this challenging marathon was to raise funds for the Christmas Appeal for Malahide Lions Club and St Vincent de Paul.
The families and friends of the children sponsored the walk and raised the much needed funds.
A huge congratulations to the children who completed over 15,000km, and a massive Thank You to everyone for your most generous donations.

Our Christmas Activity Challenge Weekend took place on the 4th and 5th December.
This consisted of a 10 hour ‘Cyclethon’, a Walking Marathon, a 100k Road Cycle and a 10 hr Relay Walk in Malahide Village.

The ‘Cyclethon’ consisted of 2 static bicycles which were manned and ‘womanned’ from 10am to 3pm in 30 minutes stints.
Six of our members and friends who are very seasoned cyclists took on the 100k road challenge in a Balbriggan to Howth loop, in very severe weather conditions and for this we are so grateful.
Three of our members did the Walking Marathon and again a big ‘thank you’ to them.
Finally a group of members and friends took on the 'Village Loop' Relay Walk around Malahide Village.

This weekend was an enormous challenge and we could not have done it without the very hard work and dedication of our members, our friends and the Transition Year Students in Malahide Community School. Part of our mission is to establish links and connectedness with both the primary and secondary schools in our community. This Christmas Challenge gave us a terrific opportunity to work with the Transition Year students and to show them what Lionism is all about in a fun, practical way.
All of these activities gave us great visibility in our community and contributed in no small way to the amazing figure of €25,000 collected during our Christmas Appeal.

Our Christmas Food Appeal took place on the 17th and 18th December.
For many years Malahide Lions Club, in common with clubs throughout the country, has made sure that those less well off in our society are not forgotten at Christmas time. Since 2003 the collection of food was discontinued for logistical reasons.

For some years now we only collect money with which we purchase vouchers from the local supermarkets. These are then distributed to those in need. We have found this to be a most satisfactory arrangement as it enables the recipients to purchase what they really need. Furthermore, it also means that we are able to negotiate a really good discount on the vouchers.

A very special thank you must go to our many friends without whose very generous assistance our task would be much harder, and to the Shiels family of Londis, Yellow Walls Road for their unfailing support.
The success of this project is due to the generosity of the people of Malahide who year in year out are tremendous supporters of the club.
Through confidential contacts in the area the club has been able to identify those in need who may not otherwise come to the notice of other charitable agencies.
The clubs motto is “We Serve”. Truly it can be said that the food appeal each year lives up to that high ideal.