Texas Wesleyan University is searching for students and faculty interested in helping improve their local community by becoming Lions Clubs International volunteers.

The Lions Club is the world’s largest service club organization with more than 46,000 clubs and 1.4 million members, according to lionsclubs.org. Lions Club members serve in multiple ways. A few include hunger relief, supporting the blind and visually impaired, tackling environmental challenges, and much more.

“Our members do whatever is needed to help their local communities,” said Handley Meadowbrook Club President John Smith.

Smith said that he believes starting a club at Texas Wesleyan would be great for the Ram family and that the club would be able to decide how they would like to serve their community. Having a faculty or staff advisor from the university to help get the club started would be a huge help.

He said he set up a table in the Brown-Lupton Campus Center lobby back in February and 10 students have already pledged to become Lions. He said he also collected more than names stating that they are interested in joining the club and serving their community.

Freshman history and political science major Jason Ashby said he is a 39-year-old combat veteran who plans to use the club and Wesleyan to get his feet wet and mind back into the formal and structured process of learning and being part of a college community.

Ashby was a member of the U.S. Marine Corps for eight years as a Sergeant for First Force Reconnaissance, a combat veteran with service-connected disabilities in post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) recovery for the last four years. He also served as Operations Chief for U.S. Diplomat Security for eight years with clearance TS-SCI Tier I. Ashby is active with several veterans organizations including War Fighter Made and North Texas Patriot Anglers.

Ashby said that he grew up seeing the Lions Club help out in Waco and Austin and thought it would be a positive way to serve while being a full-time student athlete at Wesleyan.

He said he would like to see an outreach toward those less fortunate along with helping veterans heal and recover from PTSD.

Texas Wesleyan junior history major Lynzie Moore said that she believes the Lions Club coming to Wesleyan would be a great idea.

“We need more ways to be able to volunteer in our community, and the Lions Club coming to Wesleyan would give an easy opportunity for students here to get involved,” Moore said.

“There are plenty of places around Wesleyan that could use a hand and I’m sure it would even look good on a resume,” said Moore.

Smith will be in the Brown-Lupton lobby on Thursday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Interested students, faculty, and staff are invited to come by and take about 15 minutes to gather information to see if they would like to be a part of chartering this organization.

Smith said anyone unavailable during this time can call or text him at 817-675-2563 or email at [email protected]. If any staff or faculty are interested in becoming the university advisor, please contact him.