What is a District

What is a District?

Lions Clubs International has divided the world into 135 Districts. Most of these have been further subdivided into more manageable size, so they are called Multiple Districts (MD), or simply Multiples. They may represent part of a state, a whole state, several states or even several countries.

We are a part of MD20, which comprises New York State and Bermuda. (Why Bermuda? Click here to find out.) District 20-Y2 is one of the 12 Districts within MD20. It encompasses, very roughly, the area bounded on the east by the New York State border, on the south by Albany and Rensselaer counties, on the north by Washington and Warren counties, and on the west by the eastern portion of Oneida county. (see map below)

To help District-level officers keep in touch with grass-roots Lions, the District is broken down into regions and zones.

For a list of all the clubs in 20-Y2, click here.

Why is Bermuda part of MD20? When the first Lions Club started in Bermuda in 1946, the only way to get to and from the United States, either by plane or boat, was through New York City. So they made NYS and Bermuda one District.

There are a number of districts along the U.S./Canada border that are made up of both states and provinces, or parts thereof. As I started to write this, I thought MD20 would be unique in that it would be the only district comprising both a state and a whole different country. It turns out that we're merely "semi-unique" (duoque?), because MD 35 comprises Florida and the Bahamas.