It looks like a family gathering at a local restaurant. There are handshakes and hugs all around, energetic adults just arriving from the office, a couple of school-aged children entertaining themselves along one side of the table, and plenty of food being passed around.

This meeting of the Mount Si Lions Club, it’s ninth since being chartered in May, is a family gathering, in the larger sense of the community.

“The motto of the Lions club is ‘we serve,’” said Sarah Fisher, club president, adding “The beauty of a charter club is it gets to become whatever the community needs.”

The club started by meeting the needs of its charter members, 20 people who wanted to become involved in community service, but couldn’t, for various reasons, join the already-existing North Bend Lions, Rotary, Kiwanis, or another service organization.

Tonya Eliason, raised in the Lions tradition, said she was “already trying to do things for the community.” She’s a friend of the current Rotary Club president, Jolene Kelly, and she considered joining Rotary, but “I can’t do the 7 a.m. meetings,” she said.

Mount Si Lions meet twice a month at 6 p.m., a time chosen by a majority of the members.

“We do evenings, because there are already two great service organizations that meet in the mornings,” said Fisher.

Another thing about the meetings, says club secretary July Kippen is “they’re kid-friendly, so I can bring my monkeys to every meeting.”

Kippen was already working with national organizations serving veterans, but wanted to work locally, as well, and saw the opportunity when members of the Greater Bellevue Lions district office started recruiting members for a new club in the Upper Valley in early spring.

Fisher said the decision to launch a new club rather than trying to rejuvenate the existing club in North Bend, the Snoqualmie Valley Lions Club, was made at the district level, but she understood the reasoning, of bringing in a new group and the new energy that comes with them.

The district chartered three new clubs this year, in Sultan, Seattle, and the upper Valley.

Since its charter in May and first meeting in July, the Mount Si Lions have been active in several events, large and small. A successful wine-makers’ dinner fundraiser in October gave them enough money to make their first contribution to the Mount Si Helping Hand Food Bank, and a recent partnership with the North Bend branch of the King County Sheriff’s Office, will enable the Lions to provide free bicycles to people in the community who need them.

North Bend Police Chief Mark Toner said the program benefits his department, as well as community members. Rather than having to store and eventually sell off in a county auction any abandoned bicycles that officers find, Toner said his department will now hold the bicycles for 60 days, long enough to investigate potential thefts, and for owners to reclaim their bikes. Then, the bikes are donated to the club, and Lions members will fix the bikes up and give them to community members who can use them.

“It all comes down to the local level, and what the local (community) needs,” said Elizabeth Gildersleeve, club treasurer.

For Gildersleeve, the bike program, solving two problems at once and connecting people with opportunities, is a great example of why she joined the Mount Si Lions.

Having also grown up in the Lions tradition with an uncle who’d “been a Lion as long as I can remember, probably longer than I’ve been on the earth,” Gildersleeve was always trying to help people individually, “… getting them connected with the resources they need,” she said. The club expands her ability to do that, “Because now, I have other people I can call on. If I don’t know where to find something, or to get help for someone, chances are there’s someone in the room that is going to know.”

Group effort, even more than fund-raising, is the key to this Lions Club, in Fisher’s opinion.

Sure, she admits, they could each just write checks to support the cause or organization, “but I think the value of the Lions Club coming together is the ability to lead by example, and by visibility….It’s been my experience, that there are often times, in anything, people that are willing to participate but don’t know how.”

Building the club’s visibility is an important next step, she feels, but along with that will come many club discussions about what the club’s guiding vision will be. Each member has his or her own interests within the community and they will all influence the club’s mission, Fisher said.

“Part of that process is to reach out to the community and ask about its needs, too,” said Rolfe Philip, club vice-president. As an example, for this meeting, he’d invited Mount Si Food Bank Director Heidi Dukich to give a brief presentation about the food bank’s role in the community.

Philip jokes that he joined the Lions when a friend “dragged me to a meeting,” but his role in the club has been motivated by service.

“I really just wanted to get involved in the local community,” he said, so he accepted the title of club president, initially. He quickly realized he couldn’t do justice to the demanding role, however, and stepped down.

That experience was much like his first meeting. “I honestly had no idea what Lions were,” he admits. “It was all kind of a learning process, but here I am.”

The Mount Si Lions Club meets at 6 p.m. on the second and fourth Tuesday of each month at Boxley’s in North Bend. For more information, visit www.mountsilionsclub.com.