Decreased Funds From Lion’s Club Dances

Details

Carnival

Thursday, 23 August 2012 02:30

By Everton Barnes

Antigua St. John’s - The Carnival Development Committee (CDC) was not the only one recording reduced revenues this past Carnival.

The Lion’s Club’s annual carnival dances, one of the staples of Antigua Carnival for three decades, attracted significantly less attendees this year than in previous years.

Lion’s Club President Eural Baptiste said the dances, the organisation’s biggest fund-raiser, were disappointing, and the Club now has to look at additional events this year to supplement the resulting shortfall.

Baptitse did not provide figures, but sources in the Club confirmed that some nights, when in previous years the Lion’s Den would be packed with thousands of revelers, only a few hundred attended.

“I can’t say that people were having financial difficulties and that this led to the failure of some of our events, because the theme fetes were very well attended this year. Even on nights when there was rain or threat of rain, we saw the ‘cooler’ fetes attracting thousands of patrons,” he observed.

He noted too that this year, on each of the nights that the Lion’s held a dance or event, there was a competing fete being held elsewhere.

“The people had options and they chose those options that did not include our dances/events. We did a few things differently this year.

Some worked, like our event dubbed Aurora, but another event, DJ Rave was not well received,” he disclosed.

The Lion’s president feels that inclement weather may have been a factor for the failure of this event.

He said the Lion’s Club will need to take a good look at the reasons for the decline in attendance at the dances and come up with events that would see the large turnouts the Club had experienced in the past.

“People are looking to have fun at Carnival time, and it may be that coming to the Lion’s dances is not fun anymore. We have to find ways to bring back the crowds. This means that we have to revisit everything we do to remain attractive to the party-goers,” he stated.

According to Baptiste, the carnival dances are very important to the Club as they provide the bulk of the money raised by the organisation to carry out its social outreach programmes.

“We are seeing more and more young people being diagnosed with a variety of illnesses and quite often they turn to the Lion’s Club for assistance to help defray medical bills.

“We have seen requests for medical assistance triple in recent times and if this trend continues and we are making less money from the dances, then we will have to tell some people ‘no’ to their requests, and this is something the Club wants to avoid,” he added.

He further explained that shortfalls in revenues from the dances are not a simple occurrence as they have serious social consequences.



In addition to requests for medical assistance, the dances also help fund the annual prostate cancer screening (660 men attended the free clinic last Saturday).

Baptiste said the costs for that exercise are quite significant. The Club also conducts a breast cancer screening, planned for October, as well as eye screening in all government primary schools.

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