2021 06 Handover

Rotary Club of Midhurst & Petworth have a new President

 At the end of July Rangesh Nallan finished his Presidential term.  Before handing over he had the pleasure of giving Paul Harris Fellowships  (PHF) to several people. This is an award Rotary can give to either Rotarians or members of the public who have gone above and beyond their line of duty.  Gordon McCara was recognised for the time he gave to  the people of Midhurst while he was a councillor.  Andrew Hopkirk  received his award in recognition of considerable help he has given to local people.  Rangesh then presented the incoming President, Simon Flint, with a PHF for organising over 100 volunteers to help with the vaccination days at Rotherbank Medical Centre.

Rangesh  handed the Presidential Regalia to Simon Flint and wished him well for the coming year. New President Simon welcomed Julian Goodale as his Vice President.  I am  quite sure you will be hearing a lot from both Simon and Julian during the coming year and all Rotarians wish them success in the months to come.

PHFs for Gordon McCara (L) & Andrew Hopkirk (R)

Email from Rangesh Nallan to all Rotarians:

Monday 28 June 2021

I must  say it has been an extraordinary year for all of us. Since March last year, we have had no meetings in person. In fact the handover from Peter to me last year was technically on Zoom. Initially everyone felt sorry for me,but with your help and support, we managed to turn it around and it has been a good year in terms of fellowship and our service to the community. 

We had no fundraising activity but members have been very generous to donate their meal costs which enabled us to support many activities. Paul Mellings tells me that this year was a record year in terms of our projects. I am also thankful to John Woodward who helped us secure district grants in record time to support Midhurst Food Bank and computers for schools. 

I was lucky to have a great team of experienced Rotarians to head committees like Com Voc,International, Youth service and membership. We have not had any meetings in person and this has impacted our ability to recruit new members. I am very grateful to Peter Nightingale, Paul Mellings and John Fitch who guided me all the way through a very different difficult year. I can't thank Nigel enough for his technical support and for making sure that our meetings in Zoom worked without a glitch.I also want to thank Alan Austin and Julian who helped in planning the Christmas Do and 4th Monday informal meetings. 

We had 25 speakers including some from overseas. We had the bird quiz, Christmas do,and past presidents talking about their years. All this was done in Zoom. The movie about volunteers helping out with vaccinations at the surgery was a big hit!

Overall it was a delightful experience for me and I learnt a lot, including how to conduct a debate on Zoom as we did for the Rother valley school debate. The only sad thing during the year was the passing away of our beloved Rotarian Richard Histed. M & P Rotary have lost a past president and a good friend. I was glad to be of some small help to Brenda during the last days of Richard. 

I had the pleasure and a rare opportunity as an outgoing President to award the Paul Harris Fellow to our new President Simon Flint. Simon deserves the recognition for his tremendous work in helping with vaccinations. During the year we also recognised four of our local heroes by awarding PHF. They were Mike & Chrissie Abbot,Gordon MaCara and Andrew Hopkirk. I also had the pleasure of awarding PHFs to Andrew Mitchell & Paul Mellings at the beginning of the year, a richly deserved recognition. 

Finally my sincere thanks to Inner wheel President Gill Nightingale and members who worked closely with Rotary and supported us by attending all our speaker meetings. Our speaker meetings had an average attendance of  55 to 60, which was great. 

I have enjoyed 100% support from you. Now it is our turn to rally behind the new President Simon Flint and give him the same support. Simon is very enthusiastic and has many ideas. I am very sure he will do a much better job than me.

I wish Simon all success for the year 21-22. 

P.S. I am getting wonderful messages from many Rotarians for which I am very grateful.

Best Regards

Rangesh Nallan