About the Nonprofit
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The Garden Ridge Lions Charities is a volunteer service organization for the areas bordering northern Bexar County and Comal County in Texas (San Antonio, Garden Ridge, Schertz, Cibolo). Our primary activities are to serve the gneral public by supporting and assisting the community in a variety activities that benefit the community. Our chief activities include:
Providing Vision and Hearing Testing for about 6,000 grade school children to meet the State of Texas health requirements for those areas. We work closely with school nurses in both New Braunfels ISD and Comal ISD. If we were not involved, this testing requirement would fall solely on school nurses. Our team members have been certified by the State of Texas.
Provide food and Christmas gifts for 51 needy families (includes about 168 children) in the Northern Bexar County (San Antonio, Schertz/Cibolo area) and southern Comal County (New Braunfels). Each child receives up to three gifts and families receive either a turkey or ham dinner with all the fixings including dessert. We work closely with HEB and WalMart in this activity as well as Elf Louise for gifts for children. Older children over 15 up to 18 get a $25 Wal Mart Gift Card.
Provide monetary and volunteer support for the Texas Lions Camp in Kerrville, Texas. This camp provides a place for children who have severe disabilities such as blindness, severe diabetes, down syndrome, and other physical impairments a summer camp experience free of charge. Activities at the camp include swimming, horses, games, and fishing. We do a lot of preparation work to get the camp ready as well as provide about $5,000 from our club to the camp.
We provide monetary support for Texas Leader Dogs and for Diabetic Dogs who help persons with severe diabetes. The Leader Dogs are used for people who are visually impaired and the Diabetic dogs are provided a monitor that sounds an alrm if their owner has glucose issues.
Some of our members do tutoring at the local elementary school for reading and math.
We have built four access ramps for wheel chair bound individuals who would otherwise have difficulties getting into their homes.
We conduct road cleanups in the City of Garden Ridge to keep the area free from litter.
We have worked and donated funds to the local city park. This year we are planning to donate $15,000 to the Paul Davis Park in Garden Ridge. Over the years we have cleared out brush for walking trails and built a concession stand at that park for use by the citizens of Garden Ridge.
This year we will provide ten $1,000 scholarships to deserving high school seniors in May.
We have donated funds and recieved the 2023 Business Charity of the Year from the Maurice Lamkin Jr. Make A Wish Brain Injury Foundation.
We provide candy and barrel car rides at our annual Halloween Trunk or Treat event sponsored by the Garden Ridge Library.
We support people in need on a case by case request. This year we helped a single mother get funds to allow her to enroill her daughter into a day care facility.
To fund these charitable activities, we hold an annual Charity Fish Fry and Auction event.
