IVAN Smith is one in a million.

That's what Lions Club International has decided by selecting the 61-year-old to star in a promotional video to be distributed world-wide.

A film crew from Chicago will visit Bermuda next week to shoot Mr. Smith in the course of his charity work as secretary of Paget Lions Club.

He is one of just four people chosen from the Lions' membership of nearly 1.4 million to take part in the video.

Mr. Smith, who works in advertising sales for The Royal Gazette Ltd., has been a Lion for 11 years and is a past president of the Paget club.

Mr. Smith, who is married with three grown-up children, said: "What motivates me are the needs, hurts and despair of others. I draw strength from others that are in the battlefield of life - caring, helping and cheering others."

Growing up with a father who suffered from alcoholism had been a major factor in his benevolence to others now, he said.

"After observing his drinking, watching his smoking habit (he died from lung cancer), I proposed that I would dedicate myself to helping others who had similar hurts, bad experiences and sickness," said Mr. Smith.

The film-makers from the Orbis Broadcast Group will shoot Mr. Smith at Windreach Recreational Farm with disabled children taking horse-riding lessons made possible by the Lions.

Mr. Smith will also be filmed pumping gas to raise money with a group of other Lions and supplying boxes of groceries to children of needy families.

Aside from the Lions, Mr. Smith founded a new charity, The Tae Durham Charitable Association for Physically Challenged Children, named after a child with cerebral palsy.

The crew will film Mr. Smith on Wednesday and Thursday of next week.