David Kay President of Lions La Cala

David Leonard Kay, 71 years, President of Lions La Cala de Mijas.

Member of La Cala Lions the oldest service club in the world, for around 7 years, during this year's had been tail twister, social Secretary, membership Secretary, vice President and twice President in 2021-2022 and this year 2025-2026, also worked in the charity shop for over 5 years. 

1.Your Mission and Vision 

 To serve, to help those in need regardless of ethnicity, religion or nationality.

2. What is your long-term vision? 

Our long term vision is to carry out the intention of our founder, to help those in need in our community and to carry out our 5 main causes, Hunger, Sight, Diabetes, Childhood Cancer, and the Environment.

3. How does this position/volunteering fit into the organization’s mission?

By raising funds through our charity shops in La Cala De Mijas and the social activities we hold through the year we can help those in need in our community and beyond, through donating funds to LCIF lions clubs international foundation which are used to help with natural disasters world wide.

4. What makes your organization unique?

Lions Clubs International is the oldest service club in the world, started in 1917 we have nearly 50,000 lions clubs in over 200 countries.

All the members in our club are volunteers, no one is paid, the president, officers and members all give their time freely in order to make a difference in our local community. In fact it costs us money to be members.

6. What are the core values of the organization? 

Core values are service, sight first, Diabetes, Childhood Cancer and the Enviroment.

7. What has your organization achieved o date?

Our club has a diabetic support group where we have trained nurses that carry out blood tests and a doctor to give advice. We also have an altziemers support group where for a couple of hours a week we give altziemers sufferers activities in a safe environment so that their careers can get a respite. We also work closely with other charitable organizations in our community and have even funded a horse and a specialist saddle so that disabled children can enjoy horse riding.

8. Can you share some success stories 

It is impossible to say how many people we have helped over the 26 years that our club has been in existence in La Cala De Mijas. But it must run into thousands, by both helping individuals and working closely and supporting other charities and organisations and also collaborating closely with the town hall.

9. How do you measure he success of your programms

As for people we have helped and continue to help, I can't really discuss individuals for reasons of confidentiality but we have helped families with sick children that have needed medication or treatment that they couldn't afford. We have helped with funeral costs and repatriation, we have assisted schools and sports clubs with equipment. Our welfare department is able to respond quickly when there is dire need. We work closely with  other charities and organisations supporting them when and where we can.

We have just launched message in a bottle, which we are hopefully other Lions Clubs in Spain will help to spread through the country, we even had some Lions visiting from France that showed interest in it so who knows it could spread Europe wide or even further, it is already well established in the UK. The idea is that you have a sticker on your window or door and another one on your fridge door (most homes have a fridge) inside the fridge is a plastic bottle or container which contains a form on which you write a y medical conditions, allergies, medication you are taking and a name and contact number for emergency. When the emergency services see the sticker they get the bottle from the fridge and by having the information on it they can give you the correct medication to help save your life they can then take the paper to the hospital and give it to the doctors so they know this information as well. So we don't always know how many people we have helped, but as you see our reach is world wide through LCIF and if our club wasn't here our community would definitely be worse off.

10. How do you evaluate the impact of your activities?

The feedback we get from people and organizations we help, the difference we make to our local community, the fact that we are respected by the town hall from the Mayor down, the awards we have been given by organizations within our community help us to understand and appreciate the difference we are making and the impact we have.

11. What populations do you target and how?

As already stated we help our local community but have also helped organisations in Alurin el Grande and Alurin de Torre, we have supplied equipment to the children's ward at the Costa del sol hospital. We help fund a lady who goes to Africa with a team of doctors to perform cataract surgery restoring the sight of the people in the villages who without it would be blind. We supported Ukrain with supplies for families, from our charity shop we sent clothing and blankets, we also donated food and medical supplies and through our support of LCIF we help following world wide disasters.