News 2019
Fifteen more bags of cans off to save lives
Members of South Leicestershire Litter Wombles have been super busy, adding another six bin bags full of crushed aluminium cans to the rapidly growing amount of raw material needed to build a helipad for the air ambulance helicopters taking critically-ill patients to Leicester Royal Infirmary. Because the Wombles crushed the cans, the bin bags probably …
Bye, bye, Mai!
As Novus Rotary members and guests sat down to their Christmas meal at the Stilton Cheese Inn at Somerby on General Election night, it did not need an exit poll to reveal that everyone present was unanimously saddened that it would be, for most, the last chance to see Mai Tsumura before she returns to …
Rotary goes Wombling…
Underground, overground, Wombling freeThe Wombles of Leicestershire villages are weMaking good use of the things that we findThings that the everyday folks leave behind* with apologies to Mike Batt Rotary Novus President-Elect Sarita Shah became a Womble for a morning. She joined 11 members of the South Leicestershire Litter Wombles clearing streets in South Wigston …
More links added to the chain gang
Succession planning is as important in Rotary as in business. At their Special General Meeting, Novus Rotary members were delighted to confirm that Sarita Shah will be president in the year 2020-2021. And as a bonus they were able to vote in Mark Esho who will wear the president’s chain of office during the year …
DG Rodney makes a plea for Kindness
First some facts: There are about 1.2 million Rotary members across the world. They are members of thousands of clubs. To help support them, the clubs are grouped into 530 districts. In Rotary in Great Britain and Ireland there are 4,700 Rotarians in 1,700 clubs which are in 26 districts. The clubs in Eastern Central …
6,000 cans! That’s very nearly a trailer-full!*
*With apologies to Tony Hancock’s TV episode The Blood donor (“A pint! That’s very nearly an armful!”) The latest batch of aluminium cans has been despatched to the Oakham HQ of the charity Helipads for Hospitals. Charity founder John Nowell visited the home of Novus member Jim Matthews on 28.11.2019 to collect about 6,000 aluminium …
More donors – including Wombles – and more cans
Yet more cans are on the way to Stocken Prison in Rutland where they will be melted down ready to be turned into a life-saving helipad. Currently, neither of the major Accident and Emergency departments in the East Midlands at Queens Medical Centre, Nottingham and Leicester Royal Infirmary have onsite helipads to allow air ambulances …
Helipads campaign really taking off
Representatives of four Rotary Clubs from across eastern central England have met for the first time to discuss their approach to an appeal which is really taking off. That appeal is the charity Helipads For Hospital, whose founder John Nowell also attended the meeting in Grantham with members of the Rotary clubs of Lincoln Colonia, …
Thousands more cans set for crusher
Leicester Novus — and several other Rotary clubs in eastern central England — are supporting John Nowell, founder of Helipads For Hospitals, by collecting aluminium cans which are crushed, smelted and will be transformed into helipads for hospitals which currently have no landing area for the air ambulances which serve them. Novus Rotary is grateful …
Great news on World Polio Day
October 24 every year is designated as World Polio Day to raise awareness of Rotary International’s 34-year campaign to rid the entire world of the disease which used to kill and cripple thousands of people every year. In 1985 there were more than 1,000 new cases diagnosed every day. So far this year, there have …
Jason hands cheques to charities
Immediate Past President Jason Chauhan took over the meeting of Leicester Novus Rotary to hand over £100 cheques to three representatives of local charities. Two other charities — Global Sight Solutions and Baby Basics — were unable to attend. First to receive the cheque was Adrian Walker, a member of Bradgate Rotary Club, fresh from …
Shabutsu: Copying the Buddha to focus on serenity
The word Shabutsu literally means in Chinese characters “Copying of Buddha”. However, the art of Shabutsu itself is not only copying the image of Buddha, but also retracting the mind of the Buddha while you are tracing the image. The final goal is that your state opf moind become the state of ’emptiness’ which is …
Newest member helps Novus to honourable quiz result
One of the joys of Rotary is the friendships that are formed within clubs and with members of other Rotary Clubs. Recently, Novus played Blaby Rotary at skittles in the District 1070 Minor Sports. On 09.010.2019 Novus met the Rotary clubs of Blaby, Blaby Meridian,Leicester, Oadby and Wigston in the district quiz. With several regular …
Shoppers leave donations, and take away our message
When Novus members and their friend Mai Tsumura collected in Leicester city centre on Saturday, October 5 2019, shoppers gave them £79.94 and four aluminium cans. And the shoppers took away the message that Leicester Novus Rotary is supporting Helipads for Hospitals, which wants a million aluminium cans to become the raw material to build …
Thanks, Falcons, for our life-saving Shelterboxes
The charity Shelterbox, which provides emergency homes in disaster areas has acknowledged the receipt of £1,180, enough for two fully-equipped Shelterboxes from Falcons Primary School in Leicester. The school has enjoyed a relationship with Leicester Novus Rotary since it opened four years ago. On several occasions, Alan Jones, a member of the Rotary Club of …
Rotary Connects The World
Rotary Connects the World is the motto of Rotary’s 1.2 million men and women across the world during the year 2019-2020. The Rotary Club of Leicester Novus constantly lives up to the motto with frequent visits from Rotarians and non-Rotarians from the UK and much further afield. The most recent visitor was dentist Smita Athavale, …
Good sports all round
Every autumn Rotary clubs meet in combat called District Minor Sports. The minor refers to the nature of the sports, usually skittles (long alley or table) or darts, or even Jenga. This year Novus were drawn to play the Rotary Club of Blaby and our Channi Riyait and Blaby president Gough Gamble arranged a super …
Passing on Peace experiences
Members of the Rotary Club of Leicester Novus Rotary Club are proud of their links with Falcons Primary School and the Peace Garden they helped develop there. Their ground-breaking efforts have been hailed by other Rotary clubs, schools and communities. One of the project’s most vocal fans is Margaret Morley, who was the lead Rotarian …
You CAN help, too!
More and more Rotary clubs across the east Midlands are joining the campaign to turn empty aluminium cans into helipads for hospitals. Leicester Novus got involved after our friends at the Rotary Club of Shepshed suggested we listen to the driving — or maybe flying — force behind the campaign, ex-RAF helicopter pilot John Nowell …
New venue, old* friends
*old in the sense of long-standing 😊 When the Rotary Club of Leicester Novus tried out a new venue, they welcomed back old friends. Meeting for the first time at Elizabeth Park, Checkland Road, Thurmaston, President Maya Vansia welcomed back frequent visitor Mai Tsumura who had been back to Japan to visit her sponsors and …
Online meeting sets records
Novus Rotarians set some records when they held their first-ever online meeting. Despite a few logging-in and sound problems, the meeting started promptly. Fifteen members (rather more than usual) joined in from seven different locations. The meeting ended with everyone having contributed, including the three newest members, who have joined since May. The meeting actually …
After a decade, planning for the future
The Rotary Club of Leicester Novus has been in existence for a decade. It is thriving with 21 members, eleven of whom are founder members. Those founder members chose the name Novus because they wanted their club to always be ‘new’ and novel. But they are aware that it is necessary to review their goals …
Welcome, Rotarian Atsuko
Professor Atsuko Miyake was inducted into the Rotary Club of Leicester Novus by President Maya Vansia. As a member of Leicester Novus, Atsuko is also a member of the worldwide movement dedicated to giving service above self and to extending and improving the lives of people across the planet. Jim Matthews, who proposed Atsuko for …
A crushing win for Novus
Along with other Rotary clubs in the east midlands of England, Novus is collecting empty aluminium cans to be melted down and the raw material used to create a helipad for air ambulance helicopters rushing critically-ill patients to hospital. Currently, neither Leicester Royal Infirmary nor Queens Medical Centre in Nottingham have a helipad, which can …
When Maya met Maya
The mysteries of bird migration were explained when nine members of Leicester Novus Rotary and 10 guests spent an evening at the Rutland Osprey Project on the shore of Rutland Water. The visit started when President Maya Vansia saw a photograph of an osprey called Maya – the only osprey to have a name rather …
Can you help? Yes, you can!
The Rotary Club of Leicester Novus is one of several Rotary clubs across the east Midlands which is collecting aluminium cans. The cans will be smelted into ingots which will eventually provide the raw material to build helipads for air ambulance helicopters. Neither Leicester Royal Infirmary, nor Queen’s Medical Centre, Nottingham, have helipads at the …
Tapping into emotional freedom
EFT — Emotional Freedom Technique — is an enigmatic form of therapy for a range of diseases, symptoms and conditions. Indeed, even some practitioners are not sure how it works. They say they are content to know that it does. Even open-minded sceptics in the audience were impressed when Heather Wright, explained and demonstrated ‘tapping …
Seeking out the Music Detectives
Novus member Jim Matthews gave a PowerPoint presentation entitled Seeking The Detectives on behalf of the charity Playlist For Life. Jim explained that he first heard about the Glasgow-based UK-wide charity when he attended the Rotary Conference and Showcase in Nottingham in May 2019. One of the speakers that day was Andy Lowndes, Deputy Chair …
日本からこんにちは (“Hello from Japan”)
Visiting academic Mai Tsumura has been attending meetings of Leicester Novus Rotary Club nearly every week since she arrived in September 2018, to study at Leicester University. She has recently gone back to Japan to see friends and family and also to visit the Rotary Club of Nishinomiya Ebisu which is in District 2680 and …
New member Kartar on TV with new Sikh VR museum
New Novus Rotarian Kartar Singh Bring appeared on BBC TV East Midlands Today at the launch of the new Sikh Museum accessible in Virtual Reality. Kartar’s work as the only Sikh lead hospital chaplain in the UK does not prevent him from many aspects of serving his community in a voluntary capacity. Park of that …
Sarita is the next link in the chain
The Rotary Club of Leicester Novus is in a good place… President Maya Vansia has just installed Sarita Shah to follow her into the presidency. And lined up to be president in 2021-2022 is President Nominee Mark Esho. The shape of the club they will run will be plotted at a meeting at the end …
Maya’s busy year starts at a hectic pace
New Novus Rotary President Maya Vansia has started her presidential year with a bang. The first three weeks were hectic as Maya and her husband Pradip prepared for, and celebrated, the wedding of their daughter Priya to Mathew. Then, with most of their house guests driven to Heathrow after the wedding, Maya arrived in time …
Last meal in Jason’s year
Seventeen members and guests enjoyed a meal at the Grange Farm restaurant in Oadby to celebrate the end of the year for Novus Rotary President Jason Chauhan. The next meeting will be the first with Maya Vansia as the president at the club embarks on another 12 months of giving service to prolong and enhance …
Rotarians join the clunk clique
Rotary exists to serve people locally, nationally and internationally. But Rotarians reckon they can do that best when they have cemented relationships by having fun. So, with only a few days left of the current Rotary year, Novus members met for fun and a game of petanque, or boules, at the Blue Bell, Hoby. That’s …
Step on it for helipad!
A fortnight after Leicester Novus Rotary heard helicopter pilot John Nowell explain how recycling aluminium cans can help the Air Ambulance save even more lives, the club adopted it is a Rotary project. John said he and colleagues have launched the appeal Helipads for Hospitals with the aim of asking people to collect cans which …
Maya assembles her troops
At this time of the year, every Rotary club gathers for its assembly at which it lays out its plans for the Rotary year running from July 1. This year Novus Rotary’s plans were laid before the membership by incoming president Maya Vansia. High among her goals is her desire to have a Club Visioning …
Boring business meeting? Not this one!
With its usual round of receiving reports on recent activities, studying balance sheets and approving donating cash to charities, the monthly business meetings held by Rotary clubs are generally more routine than riveting. But Leicester Novus’s June Business was enlightened and enlivened by guest speaker Prof Atsuko Miyake. Prof Miyake has been in Leicester since …
Saving cans can save lives
Recycling was back on the agenda when Leicester Novus Rotary met to hear about the organisation Helipads for Hospitals. Former RAF helicopter pilot John Nowell spoke briefly about his RAF career — “I was too tall to be a fighter pilot, as I wanted, so I flew helicopters” — before talking about his voluntary work …
Recycling rights and wrongs
The complexities of recycling were expertly explained to Leicester Novus Rotary by Sallie Butt, who is an Environment and waste Technician in the Waste Initiatives team at Leicestershire County Council. Members were keen to learn why each district tackled recycling differently and why it is not possible for them to adopt a standardised, unified approach. …
Learning about Rotary
District Assembly — the annual spring-time gathering of Rotary members from the 89 clubs in the east Midlands of England — is regarded by many of the 500 or so attendees to be one of the best events of the Rotary year. It is a time for learning about what Rotary is, what Rotary does …
Compliance: What it means to Rotary
About a year ago, Leicester Novus Rotarians had a question about the Disclosure and Barring Service. They sought advice from the Compliance Officer for District 1070 and were impressed by the speed with which Rotarian Louise Willis resolved the issue. So they decided to get Louise — who worked in compliance area for the commercial, …
Welcome to the family, Ranjit!
Using a globe-wide form of words, Ranjit Singh Mann was inducted into the Rotary Club of Leicester Novus by President Jason Chauhan. It was followed by another, much less formal event which has become a tradition at Leicester Novus; a chat-show type interview conducted by the club’s third president Frazer Robson. It is much more …
Newest member steps right up
Pharmacist Ranjit Mann has only just been elected a member of the Rotary Club of Leicester Novus. In fact he has not yet even been officially welcomed into Rotary. But today he used his vocational skills to help Novus, alongside Rotarians from Leicester and Leicester De Montfort clubs deliver our annual Know Your Blood Pressure …
Tears as Eddie wins for his family
With a cry of delight Eddie Scatcherd burst into tears of relief and joy as he won the men’s final of the darts competition held as part of the Rotary District 1070 Disability Games at Stamford Endowed Schools. For wheelchair-user Eddie, his win was special, coming just weeks after the death of his mother. Over …
Wow! Year 3 raises £930 in five weeks
Alan Jones, a member of Hinckley Ambion Rotary and the District 1070 ambassador for Shelterbox, has been to Falcons Primary School three times to demonstrate and talk about the charity’s life-saving activities in areas hit by natural and man-made disasters. Within days of Typhoon Idai which hit Mozambique, Zimbabwe, and Malawi, leaving more than 1,000 …
Pam reflects on meeting for 530 incoming Governors
Secretary Pam Spokes is the wife of incoming District 1070 Governor Rodney Spokes. They travelled to San Diego for the mandatory assembly of all incoming Governors from the 528 districts (25 in Great Britain and Ireland). Pam showed some wonderful slides of their trip to San Francisco, where they caught up with family, before driving …
Inspirational Alice wins through
Barry Rassin, the President of Rotary International leads the 1.2 million Rotary members around the world by urging us to “Be The Inspiration.” Each year Pam Spokes, the secretary and Youth Service lead of the Rotary Club of Leicester Novus invites children at city schools to enter Rotary’s Young Writer competition to encourage creative writing. …
To Mai and Yuka, Cheers!
Since September 2018, Mai Tsumura has been a big part in the life of the Rotary Club of Leicester Novus. She has been in the city doing doctoral research for a paper provisionally titled: Charity as Guidance and Justice?: John Ruskin’s Views and Practices. Mai’s mother, Yuka, returned to Leicester recently (she came last September …
Novus focus on needs of blind people
The Leicestershire, Rutland and Wycliffe Society for the Blind was set up 150 years ago to help blind people — mainly by allowing them to become more self-sufficient by weaving baskets. Nowadays, the charity is called Vista and is unique in that it holds the register of blind people throughout the city and two counties. …
RIBI president visits our Peace Garden
A memorable couple of days for the Rotary Club of Leicester Novus came to an end when Debbie Hodge, the President of Rotary International in Great Britain and Ireland, visited the Peace Garden Novus has created at Falcons Primary School, in Leicester. Debbie and her husband Mike came to the city from their home in …
10th ‘birthday’ celebration makes £1,300
Leicester Novus Rotary will be 10 years old in the summer of 2019 but the youngsters could not wait to celebrate. So they chose a Thursday as close as possible to February 23, the date of the first ever Rotary meeting in Chicago in 1905. They decided to link it as one of the World’s …
Mai receives alumna pin
In August 2018 Mai Tsumura searched and found the Rotary Club of Leicester Novus website and e-mailed the club to say that she was coming to the city in September to undertake post-doctoral research at Leicester University.Mai said she was being sponsored by the Rotary Club of Nishinomiya-Ebisu near her home in Japan. She wanted …
Rotarians become Dementia Friends
Rather than deliver a lecture when she visited the Rotary Club of Leicester Novus, Lesley Green delivered an interactive session on behalf of the Alzheimer’s Society. First, she asked her audience to marry up two halves of 12 broken sentences to get them thinking about the five key messages of her presentation:1 Dementia is not …
Maya joins the chain gang
Several months after taking on the role of President-Elect, Maya Vansia received her chain of office from current President Jason Chauhan at a meeting of Leicester Nous Rotary. The delay was caused by the busy-ness of the Rotary Club members. Maya will take over from Jason at the end of the Rotary year, which runs …
Novus sets up its own charity
Many people think every Rotary Club is a charity. Not so! Most people trust Rotary Clubs because of their excellent reputation for honesty and fair-dealing.Most UK Rotary Clubs have a trust registered with the Charity Commission to give donors that extra assurance that their money will be properly handled and accounted for.Now the Rotary Club …
Exploring the links to city’s charities
Rotarian Colin Derrick is President of the Rotary Club of Leicester 2018-19 and aims to raise £20,000 for Charity Link http://charity-link.org He was welcomed by Leicester Novus President Jason Chauhan when he gave a talk about his chosen charity. It was a fact-filled fascinating presentation. Colin told his audience that Charity Link, formed in 1876, helps …
Did You Know?
Forty years ago, Rotary launched its campaign to rid the world of polio.
Then, 350,000 people — many of them children — were being disabled and killed by the disease every year.
We started in 1979 with vaccinations for six million children in the Philippines.
Today, Afghanistan and Pakistan are the only countries where polio remains endemic.
Rotary and other partners stuck at it, raising $1.2 BILLION and immunising more than 2.5 BILLION children.
We have eradicated two of the three strains of the disease.
Wouldn’t you like to be part of such a success story?
You can be, by e-mailing Novus Rotary
Rotary is dedicated to seven areas of focus: to build international relationships, improve lives, and create a better world to support our peace efforts and end polio forever.
Promoting peace
Rotary encourages conversations to foster understanding within and across cultures. We train adults and young leaders to prevent and mediate conflict and help refugees who have fled dangerous areas.
Fighting disease
We educate and equip communities to stop the spread of life-threatening diseases like polio, HIV/AIDS, and malaria. We improve and expand access to low-cost and free health care in developing areas.
Providing clean water, sanitation, and hygiene
We support local solutions to bring clean water, sanitation, and hygiene to more people every day. We don’t just build wells and walk away. We share our expertise with community leaders and educators to make sure our projects succeed long-term.
Saving mothers and children
Nearly 6 million children under the age of five die each year because of malnutrition, poor health care, and inadequate sanitation. We expand access to quality care, so mothers and their children can live and grow stronger.
Supporting education
More than 775 million people over the age of 15 are illiterate. Our goal is to strengthen the capacity of communities to support basic education and literacy, reduce gender disparity in education, and increase adult literacy.
Growing local economies
We carry out service projects that enhance economic and community development and create opportunities for decent and productive work for young and old. We also strengthen local entrepreneurs and community leaders, particularly women, in impoverished communities.
Supporting the Environment
More than $18USD million in grant funding from the The Rotary Foundation, Rotary’s own charity, has been given to environmental-related projects over the past five years. Creating a distinct area of focus to support the environment will give Rotary members even more ways to bring about positive change in the world and increase our impact.
