‘Young’ Mitchell’s Plain lion roars into governor role

In the jungle of the retired, a Mitchell’s Plain lion is standing out because of his “youth”.

Bevil Lackay, of Portland, has been elected as the new District Governor for the Lion’s Club of District 410W (West), which covers the Western Cape Province and Namibia.

“I’ve just turned 50,” Lackay said, adding that he is the youngest person to hold the title.

Lackay is also from the Lions’ Club of Mitchell’s Plain, which is one of the youngest among the 55 clubs in the district.

“It’s a milestone for our club,” Lackay said, adding that the club is only eight years old.

Lackay was installed in his new position last month, along with all the district governors from around the world, at a ceremony in Orlando, Florida.

Of the organisation, Lackay said: “Lions has been in Cape Town, or in South Africa, for nearly 70 years. We’re the largest service organisation in the world. We are nearly 1,4 million Lions in around
49 000 clubs.”

Community work

Lackay, who works in IT, is no stranger to service.

“The reason I wanted to get involved with the organisation was, I was doing community work on my own and it was great, but it was very, very tough because the network is difficult. So getting involved in this club is, you know, the clubs within Cape Town. So I was able to sort of tap into that network.”

Upon joining Lackay soon found like minds albeit somewhat older ones.

“What happens is people tend to serve when they are free and that generally happens in retirement age, at around 60 or 70,” he said.

However, the club is looking at fostering service leadership among the youth too.

“We do have a Leo programme which is for younger members. Some of our clubs have a programme where we do youth empowerment and get younger individuals involved in serving and that way we create leaders. Clubs like our Fish Hoek club have a strong Leo Club.”

For his reign, Lackay has several service areas, including hunger alleviation, diabetes awareness and mental wellness which he will be focused on, but he says his theme for the year is “together we change lives”, which is all about collaborating with other service organisations.

“We collaborate, first of all, as clubs together and then we collaborate with other organisations because we’re all in the same business and that is to help our community.”