Page 38 - Phonebox Magazine September 2015

Newport Pagnell and Olney Lions Club
Street Collection
BOFF will be taking place this month and the organisers will be supporting the Ride for Willen project which raising funds for Willen Hospice. The event is aiming to raise £100,000 for our local Hospice and as Milton Keynes Council have given us 12th September for our Street Collection, we felt that it would be appropriate for us to donate 50% of whatever we collect to help BOFF maximise their support to Willen Hospice. If you see any of the Lions when you are down at BOFF, please do drop in a few coins to their collecting can and help our local Hospice and the various good causes which Lions support throughout the year.
Olney & Newport Pagnell Town Calendars
The photos are now in and the judging has commenced for the photos that will be making up the Olney Town Calendar. The Newport Pagnell Town Calendar will have past photos of the Town, so two quite different publications. They will be going on sale from the beginning of October so make sure you get yours and support the Lions Club as we work within the community. Advance orders costing £5 each can be made via our contact page on our website www.npolneylions.btck. co.uk on a COD basis. Please ensure you make it clear which calendar you want, the number of copies you need and a contact number or address. We will be in touch when
we have supplies and with all profits from the calendars being used by the Lions for the benefit of others, you can be satisfied that you will truly be entering into the spirit of the season.
Medical Detection Dogs
You may have read or heard via the Media, of a relatively new charity which is based in the Milton Keynes area. The charity trains dogs to identify certain cancers and are proving to be far more accurate than some traditional methods. The standard PSA test to detect those at risk of Prostate Cancer, for example, can return a massive number of false positives which can lead to major concerns and costly biopsies for people who don’t actually have the disease.
The dogs, however, are demonstrating over 90% accuracy and have just been tasked with running a major trial by Milton Keynes
University Hospital which is expected to lead to the use of dogs being widely recognised in the NHS.
In addition, they also train Medical Assistance dogs for people with a wide range of serious potentially life threatening illnesses. The dogs can detect oncoming symptoms giving the patient an opportunity to take action to minimise the impact.
Our club has been speaking to the charity as we would like to help them raise awareness of their work, we anticipate running a session locally which will enable anyone interested to come along and learn about the work they are doing locally, meet the dogs, their owners and the find out about the fantastic results being achieved by this ground breaking work. Keep your eyes on our website, Phonebox and the noticeboards around town for details of this free event.
Recent Donations
As a result of Motorama, which helped us raise almost £1000, we were delighted to give donations of £250 each to two local charities: William Crook’s Brighter Future Fund at Great Ormond Street Hospital and Toby’s Trust which is supporting local child Toby O’Grady who suffers from Dravet syndrome (find out more about the syndrome and Toby at his website, www. tobystrust.org).
Our final Motorama donation of £500 was donated to Marie Curie, the charity that supports families who are coping with those affected by cancer.
A fantastic thank you to everyone who dropped a coin in one of our cans, bought a raffle ticket or sponsored the event.
And Finally
Would you like to help your community through Lions? We always welcome support and help especially when we are short of man (and woman) power. If you think you may be able to respond to an appeal for help, why not become a friend of Lions. Simply give us your email address or phone number and in times of need, we will be in touch. If you are not available, simply ignore our request as there will inevitably be another coming along in a month or so time. It’s a great way to contribute to our great community.
38 Phonebox Magazine