If you have bottles and cans to spare this weekend, the Comox Valley Monarch Lions Club will take them.
The club’s spring bottle drive happens Saturday at the Courtenay Return-It Centre.
All proceeds go to community projects in the Valley.
This will be a major fundraiser for the club because COVID has put most of their other activities on pause.
“We strive to find new ones that will respect the limitations put on everyone, hence we are trying the drive through/by bottle drive,” vice president Cec Specht said.
Specht explained that their major service project is providing Vision Screening to all Grade 2, 4, and 7 Students in School District 71, where we go into the schools and screen the students for vision problems.
Roughly eight percent of the students are referred for further testing.
Specht also spoke about past fundraising initiatives put on by the club.
“In the last few years their major source of fundraising has been selling our 911 reflective signs which not only provide us with funds to give back to the community but also provide a service to the community by making the signs available,” Specht said. “We also have other fundraisers such as supplying bar services for Social functions… selling Christmas cakes and any other opportunity that arises.”
According to Specht, the club donates in excess of $25,000 back into the community.
Over the past few years we have supported the Comox Valley Food Bank, Salvation Army, Boys & Girls Club, St Johns Ambulance youth brigade, Family Services Healthy family program, Therapeutic Gardens, Comox Valley Child Development, Comox Valley Transition Society, annual Bursaries to the secondary schools and NIC Sonshine Lunch program, Lush Valley Food Society, and John Howard Society.
