When Chris Bennett took over the presidency of the Monmouth Rotary Club from fellow Rotarian Bill Parnell at the Annual Handover Dinner last Wednesday he was certainly not acting alone, writes Nigel Heath.

For similar traditions marking July 1st as the official start of the new global rotary year were being followed by forty-six thousand other clubs with some 1.4 million members in more than two hundred countries across the world.

But the town was now in real danger of losing access to this immensely valuable world-wide resource unless more people join the Monmouth Rotary Club and gave it their active support, members were told.

It’s only thanks Rotary that local students can make trips of their young lifetimes to attend an annual international convention in the USA and that the Monmouth Sports Association received £30,000 in disaster relief funding after losing all its equipment in the great flood.

New President Chris, Head of Transformation and project engineer with innovative South Wales company Safron Seats GB told over thirty mostly elderly members at the Hand Over Dinner in Bar 125 that being part of declining organisations like Rotary, Lions and Round Table was not sought- after anymore.

So, boosting club membership was to be the main thrust of his year in office: “We have to thrive to survive and the club is not going to fold on my watch,” he pledged.

Retiring President Bill Parnell gave a resume of the years wide ranging activities including the traditional Wye raft race, the Walk the Wye charity fund-raiser, and later Bonfire Night and Santa street collections which both helped boost the Mayors Flood Appeal.

On the international scene he focussed on the club’s ongoing support for Ukraine and its active support for the poor of Aswan in Egypt.