Lions Breakfast, and Rotary Flea Market raises lots of funds

By Christopher Tobutt

Two of Cayman’s biggest service organizations, the Lions Club and the Rotary Club got together at the Lions Centre on Saturday April 24, to raise funds for all the good work they do. The Lions were busy raising money by cooking the most delicious breakfast you ever smelled, and tasted and selling it to a great line of customers. Lions get things done, but so do Cayman’s Rotary clubs, and they organized a really big fund-raising flea market, with items mostly going between five dollars and ten dollars (although if you made a reasonable offer, it usually wasn’t turned down. There were many high-quality items on sale for real bargain-of-the-century prices. Jackets, beautiful dresses and dress-shirts, men and women’s shoes were all on sale. All the items were donated either by Rotary Club members or their family & friends.

Robert Powell, Chair of the Foundation Committee for Rotary Sunrise said: “We are holding this flea market to raise funds for the Rotary Foundation that does good work, globally as well as locally. Everything that is sold here in this flea market, the proceeds will be donated to the Rotary Polio Plus fund, which helps vaccinate people across the world against polio, and provides the delivery mechanism for vaccinations so we’re anticipating that some of that work will also be used for covid vaccinations as the vaccines are rolled out across the world. So far, we’ve probably had two or three hundred people coming to buy,” he said.

Not to be outdone (in their own hall, too!) the Lions Club breakfast was in full swing:

President of Lions Club, Carmin Godfrey, said: “This is our breakfast and we used to have it here every month, but that has fallen away now and we try to have it every Quarter instead. We have some very delicious items including some fresh fish & fritters, liver & onions and ackee & salt-fish and we’ve recently added turtle gumbo and turtle stew to the menu.” It certainly looked delicious. Customers had a choice: 12 dollars for the ‘single’, such as liver and onions or ackee and salt-fish by itself, and if you want a combo of any of those two, its 15 dollars. It’s a fundraising project so it goes back into the community assistance that we have; various aspects of community assistance such as feeding children in the schools and then we also have other projects such as giving gifts out to the needy people at Christmas time and we also assist people through the food pantry as well.”

Lions share a core belief - to serve their community. Founded in 1917, Lions are perhaps best known for fighting blindness, but also volunteer for many different kinds of community projects - including caring for the environment, feeding the hungry and aiding seniors and the disabled. Lions also support local children and schools by providing scholarships, recreation facilities and programs, and mentoring programs.