New Optimist Club chartered in Tillsonburg
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The Optimists are back in town.
"We're a youth-based service club," said Chris Parker, president of the newly chartered Tillsonburg and Area Optimist Club. "All of our events and our projects are going to be youth-based and targeted towards children."
Tillsonburg and Area Optimist Club currently meets every second and fourth Tuesday of the month at Upper Deck (7 p.m.).
The new club was sponsored by Kitchener West Optimists.
"Bob (McFadyen) was the one who was looking into opening up in this area," said director Monia Butler. "And Jurgen (Walther), the two of them were trying to start a new club here. They had already had one meeting here in town, and a friend of mine asked me if I wanted to join."
Butler started recruiting on social media, and just two weeks after receiving their official charter on May 12, they had grown to 28 members.
"I thought it was going to be a little harder (recruiting)," Butler admitted. "We've had a lot of interested people. Social media is beautiful for that – I've had a lot of people join just from my posts."
"It's grown in a hurry," said Parker. "A big hurry. We're starting to see some younger people who have decided to get involved, which is nice because you don't usually see that in service clubs."
"A lot of people are excited," said Butler. "It's good that we do have younger people on board because they seem to be the ones pushing... there's so many people with some great ideas."
"With new membership you get new ideas," said Parker. "It's just being able to harness everybody's abilities into the tasks they're good at."
Having a solid membership base should translate into solid fundraising, which will be one of their priorities.
"You have to have the funding to be able to take on new projects... so we're going to have some fundraising campaigns over the next while to raise funds. We have good backing from Optimist International."
Two early projects will help people know the Optimists are back in town, and hope to carry on a long and successful local Optimist tradition. They will have information tables at Turtlefest this weekend and at Ribfest in July. They would also like to organize a 'Day in the Park' with disc golf and barbecue at Coronation Park.
"It's going to be a family-oriented event," said Parker.
A charter banquet has been scheduled Sept. 12, including silent auction, with more details to be announced.
"Come next summer, you may see us branch out into other stuff..."
For more information on the Tillsonburg and Area Optimist Club, contact Parker (cwgparker@hotmail.com) or Butler (moniabutler@hotmail.com). They also have a Facebook page.
Optimist International is a worldwide volunteer organization made up of more than 2,500 clubs dedicated to "bringing out the best in kids." The Southwest Ontario District (District 45) is the third largest out of 48 districts around the world.