LEO Club Stema Chevaliers:
8 years of Service, a lifetime of impact.
By: Leonel Graciano Lie, 11 St. Ernest student
Leo Leonel, reporting for duty. Funny isn’t it? How LEO is quite literally incorporated in my name. I always tell people that I founded the organization.
On serious notes though, I am Leo Leonel, the Treasurer of LEO Club Stema Chevaliers District 307 A1 Indonesia, which is a Stella Maris GS school based club. We chartered on the 13th of June 2019, and are going to celebrate our 8th year in service this June 13, 2026.
LEO club has been such a growth stepping stone for me, as I am able to provide lasting impact to the people in our geographical community, not just neighborhoods, schools, but a wide range of people. LEO stands for Leadership, Experience, and Opportunity. We aim to help our members grow leadership and communication skills by providing them opportunities to gain experiences.
I would categorize LEO events into three types: Service, Fellowship, and Training. First of all, Service is a type of event which provides impactful benefits to the community. This is based on the 8 LIONs global causes, namely Diabetes, Vision, Youth, Hunger, Disaster Relief, Humanitarian Efforts, Childhood Cancer, and Environment. Some examples of our club services are:
- Hands of Hope: Where our club visited Yayasan Kasih Anak Kanker Indonesia (YKAKI) and provided their wishlist items, and overall became a platform for them to tell their stories and struggles, fulfilling the Childhood Cancer Global Cause.
- Animal Rescue: where our club visited an animal shelter who is monetarily struggling as they are in the works of building an animal clinic, therefore we provided monetary donation, and also itemized donations such as food and toys for the animals, fulfilling the environment cause.
Of course, these are just 2 out of the many services we have held, as the versatility of our club has allowed us to hit most of these global causes.
Meanwhile fellowships are a type of event to strengthen bonds between leo members. Of course one of the many reasons we joined Leo is to build connections, and these fellowships are the best opportunities to do so. One fellowship that our club has held was LEOLYMPICS 2.0. This event was a collaboration between Leo club stema chevaliers, leo club jakarta humanita, and our district 307 A1.
We held 4 competitions: Basketball, Badminton, Futsal, and Volleyball. We were able to gather around 150 leos in our district to participate in healthy competitions together, empowering our sense of sportsmanship and allowing us to better understand each other’s capabilities.
Last but definitely not least, we have training. These trainings are aimed to improve leadership and organizational skills, allowing all leos to grow together. Our club has been invited to join 3 trainings this year, i.e. PSTVP Training by our district, which mainly covers the hard skills needed to become a BOD, what reports to give, what SOPs to follow, and so on and so forth. We then also join an Authentic Leadership training hosted by our Lions sponsoring club, and also the Leo leadership training. The authentic leadership training talks about getting rid of social prejudices and seeing everyone as an equal to be a good leader, meanwhile the leo leadership training talks about how communication is important for leadership. Truly these training sessions were beneficial to me and I believe to everyone else who joined, as the coaches were really engaging and did workshops, not just talks.
And after all that, comes back to my realization that this is technically my first year of membership in leo. I joined once in seventh grade, then again in the eleventh. It’s eye-widening how one can grow so rapidly within a year, and therefore comes my strong suggestion for you, who is reading this article, to join a Leo Club. It definitely helped me find my purpose. I would describe the experience as a mock to adulthood, you get to experience things from working with different leadership styles of people, the hard skills of management and organizational skills, and most importantly the opportunity to serve people beyond our reach. We may serve the people visible to us, but we never realize the domino effect as the aftermath of our works. One care package, can be shared to a family, can be shared with a neighborhood, and furthermore. We only keep on growing, and we have good visions and intentions in the coming years, making sure the journey for both leo members and the people we impact become more meaningful, making life more worth it to live for day by day. Everyone has the right to contribute to the well being of society, and everyone has the right to live in a state of well being in the middle of society, which is why I urge you once again, to join Leo club.
Leo Club Stema Chevaliers
Hand in Hand, We Help Others
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