I joined Lions Club for the wrong reasons and here's what I found out instead

Lions Club of Kuala Lumpur North president James Khoo Teng Kit joined the club to network but today he understands the meaning of showing up and serving those who need help.

Let me be honest with you about something most Lions Club presidents would never say out loud. I didn’t join the club because I was moved by a deep calling to serve humanity. I joined because I was told it would be good for my network.

That’s the truth.

I run a small practice in Kuala Lumpur that focuses on bodywork and mind coaching, the kind of work that relies entirely on people knowing you exist and trusting you enough to let you help them.

When someone I respected said: “James, join Lions Club and it will open doors,” I listened. I signed up, paid my dues and showed up.

What happened next surprised me.

I grew up vaguely aware that Lions Club existed. I associated it with charity dinners, members in their Lions vests, and maybe a park bench with a donation plaque. I thought Rotary was the sophisticated one and Lions was “the other one”.

I had no idea what either actually did beyond “giving back” in some general, undefined way. I suspect most Malaysians under 40 feel the same.

Ask anyone in their 20s what Lions Club International is, and you’ll likely get a blank stare or a guess involving animal conservation. That’s not their fault. It’s ours.

There are people in this organisation who genuinely, quietly and without any expectation of recognition show up every month to feed the hungry, drive the elderly to dialysis, give spectacles to children who can’t see the blackboard, and donate blood so that strangers can survive surgery.

They don’t post about it much. They don’t have a PR team. They just show up.

And when I started showing up alongside them, something shifted in me that I didn’t expect and couldn’t have planned for.

Several weeks into my presidency, I received a message from a man I’ll call Vin. He was 44, registered OKU, living with terminal cancer and severe rheumatoid arthritis, with no family support, and hadn’t eaten properly in days.

He had exhausted every avenue he could think of and reached out to Lions Club of Kuala Lumpur North as a last resort.

I bought him dinner that night. I got him a toothbrush, toothpaste and shower gel. Small things. Things I could afford without thinking twice. He messaged me later that evening. He said at least today he could eat, take his medicine and rest. He said it brought a lot of light back into his life. He said he had been in a very dark place.

I sat with that message for a long time. I joined Lions Club to build my network. And here I was, at 11pm on a weeknight, feeling something I hadn’t felt in a long time – that I had done exactly the right thing with my day.

Taking on a Lions Club presidency while running a solo practice and raising two young boys is not for the faint-hearted. Nobody told me about the administrative load, the herding of volunteers, the politics of a club with decades of legacy and strong personalities, the meetings that run late, the projects that fall through, or the moments when you wonder if any of this is worth it.

There are weeks when I am pulled in four directions simultaneously – clinic, training, family and club – and I feel the weight of all of them at once.

But here is what I have also gained. I have sat across the table from corporate leaders, government-linked organisations and hospital administrators as an equal, not as a service provider pitching for business. The Lions Club presidency opened rooms that would have taken me years to access independently. And in those rooms I am not selling anything. I am building something. That distinction matters more than I expected.

We spend our 20s and 30s chasing the obvious – things, career, income, status, comfort. And most of us get some version of what we chase.

But there is a quiet hunger underneath all of that which comfort alone cannot satisfy. You want to matter. Not just to your employer or your family, but to someone who has no reason to expect anything from you.

Service clubs like Lions give you a structured way to act on that hunger without abandoning everything else you are building.

You don’t have to be a saint to join. You don’t have to sacrifice your ambition or your career or your weekends entirely. You just have to show up. And be willing to be surprised by what showing up does to you.

There is an old question: is it better to give a man a fish or teach him to fish? I think about this often. The best service is not charity. It is the kind of help that restores dignity, builds capacity and leaves a person more capable than before you arrived. That is what Lions Club, at its best, tries to do.

If you are reading this and you have never heard of Lions Club International before today, that is something we as Lions need to own and change. We are not loud enough. Our presence on the ground is real, but our presence in the public conversation is almost invisible.

We rely on club social media, limited press coverage and word of mouth in circles that are already shrinking. It starts with more people knowing we exist, what we actually do and why it might be worth their time.

So consider this your introduction. We are Lions. We serve. And we are looking for the next generation of people who want to do the same, for whatever reason brings them through the door.

James Khoo Teng Kit is president of Lions Club of Kuala Lumpur North for the 2026-2027 service term. He is also a registered traditional and complementary medicine practitioner, NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) coach and Human Resource Development Corporation (HRDC)-accredited trainer based in Kuala Lumpur.