Major Lions donation to build new accomodation sites

OCEAN Grove-Barwon Heads Lions Club will provide $600,000 for four new disability accommodation units, in what the club says is its largest ever individual fundraising contribution.

The club has partnered with disability services provider genU for the project, which will build the new units on an existing genU site at the corner of Dare Street and Presidents Avenue, Ocean Grove.

Lions volunteers finalised plans with genU’s community and pathways general manager Brendan Howard last month.

The club expects its $600,000 contribution to be enough for four specialist sites and a staff area , with genU to donate land that is behind a current housing complex on the same block that it operates.

The Lions Club’s Graham Mulroney said the project was the culmination of more than a decade of fundraising and continued the club’s 30-year commitment to provide more accommodation for people in need.

“We’re absolutely proud to see this come to fruition,” he said.

“It’s a very large project for any Lions club I think, but certainly for our club, it’s by far the biggest project we’ve run, and we’re very proud that we’ve been able to get it to this stage.”

Mr Mulroney said the Lions Club was thrilled to partner with genU for the project, which would deliver much-needed disability accommodation for the Ocean Grove community.

“We’re interested in people with needs in the community, and we were focused on accommodation,” he said.

“We landed on disability because of our conversations with genU.

“They are very good at what they do, and there’s no doubt a need locally, so we thought it was a really good match for what we were trying to do.”

The new project continues the growth of the club’s provision of community housing,

The Lions built units in 1991 at Barwon Heads, which are still in action today for State Government housing.

It subdivided a donated block from developers of Ocean Grove’s Kingston Estate in 2011 for two more units, which launched its Barwon Grove Foundation charitable arm.

That fund bought a block on which the club built two more houses in 2017 at the same estate, with those sales raising the $600,000 for the genU project.