The weather stayed good for this year's Nonsuch Big Band in the Park concert featuring The Jay Craig Orchestra supported by The Redhill and Reigate Stompers.

An audiece of over 800 joined us for the concert which this year featured a much improved sound system.

Plans are already underway for the 2010 concert.

Tickets for this year's Nonsuch Big Band in the Park Concert are now on sale.

The concert, in the gardens of Nonsuch Mansion House, is being held on Friday 19th June. Featuring the Jay Craig Orchestra supported by the Reigate & Redhill Stompers, tickets are on sale at £14 from the Big Band Box office (telephone 020 8786 3441) or from any of the following local outlets:

• Cheam Village: Village Ceramics 31 Station Way
• North Cheam: Dean Kirby's Creative Flooring 538 London Road
• Worcester Park: Read N Rite 104 Central Road
• Stoneleigh: Mantle & Partners 77 Stoneleigh Broadway
• Ewell: Houghton White Optometrists 68 High Street
• Epsom: Peachey's News, next to the Ashley Centre
• Sutton: Sutton Music 64 Haddon Road

John Goodhead, a member of Nonsuch Rotary Club, is leading a Group Study Exchange Team to Sao Paulo in Brazil in May.

The Rotary Foundation’s Group Study Exchange (GSE) programme is a unique cultural and vocational exchange opportunity for business people and professionals between the ages of 25 and 40 who are in the early stages of their careers. The programme provides travel grants for teams to exchange visits in paired areas of different countries. For four to six weeks, team members experience the host country's culture and institutions, observe how their vocations are practiced abroad, develop personal and professional relationships, and exchange ideas.

In a typical four-week tour, applicants participate in five full days of vocational visits, 15 to 20 club presentations, 10 to 15 formal visits and social events, two to three days at the district conference, three to four hours per day of cultural and site tours, and three to four hours per day of free time with host families.

For each team member, the Foundation provides the most economical round-trip airline ticket between the home and host countries. Rotarians in the host area provide for meals, lodging, and group travel within their district.

A group from Brazil visited our District 1140 last October and now John will lead a return group who will spend May in Brazil, concluding with the District 2240 Annual Conference.

District 4420 covers the southern part of Sao Paulo and Santos and our group is a single vocational team of young police officers. They will spend the whole of May in Brazil culminating in District 4420’s Annual Conference.

The photograph shows, in the back row, John Goodhead and Josephine Bright representing Surrey Police and sponsored by Woking Rotary Club and in the front row from the left, John Halfacre representing Hampshire Police and sponsored by the Aldershot Rotary Club, Jayme Johnson representing the Metropolitan Police and sponsored by the Kew Gardens Rotary Club and Alex Thorne representing the British Transport Police also sponsored by the Kew Gardens Rotary Club.

John is no stranger to the international scene. Working with VSO he and his wife Barbara have previously worked in Albania, Kosovo and Zambia helping local people to establish and manage small businesses.

Eight pupils from Nonsuch High School for Girls, Carshalton High School for Girls and Carshalton Boys Sports College recently took part in a Rotary Youth Leadership Award (RYLA) compliments of Nonsuch Rotary.

In total 29 young people from the Rotary District 1140 area spent a weekend at Avon Tyrrell, an activity centre near the village of Burley, in the New Forest, Hampshire.

Rotary Youth Leadership Awards is Rotary's leadership training programme for young people. RYLA participants can be ages 14-30, but we usually invite pupils from local secondary schools to enter for an award.

RYLA emphasises leadership, citizenship, and personal growth, and aims to:

• Demonstrate Rotary's respect and concern for youth


• Provide an effective training experience for selected youth and potential leaders


• Encourage leadership of youth by youth


• Recognise publicly young people who are rendering service to their communities

Read feedback from Carshalton Boys Sports College here.

Chris Forkan was presented with a Paul Harris Fellowship at Nonsuch Rotary’s annual President’s Ball on Saturday 4th April.


The Paul Harris Fellowship was established by Rotary International in 1957, ten years after the death of founder Paul Harris. It is presented to Rotarians and others in recognition of outstanding service to the community and the club.

Chris Forkan, Nonsuch Rotary’s Youth Officer, has led our youth activities for a number of years. He has built relationships with a number of local schools and has worked tirelessly to fulfil an important Rotary goal of helping young people to maximise their potential. Chris has established Nonsuch Rotary as a leading supporter of youth activities. This includes mock interviews to help students prepare for university and work, Rotary Youth Leadership Awards (RYLA) providing an outward bound style training and development programme for young people, Youth Speaks public speaking competition and Rotary’s Young Chef competition.

The award came as a complete surprise when presented to Chris by President David Riley at the President’s Ball but all members agreed was well deserved.

Rotary promotes an annual national public speaking competition for young people and Nonsuch Rotary Club organises the Sutton heat supported by local schools.

This year Carshalton Boys Sports College won the Senior category and Wallington County Grammer School for Boys the Intermediate category.

Carshalton Boys then went on to win the District Semi-Final held on 6th February and will now compete in the District Final held in Staines on 26th February

Ms Lorna Ellis, Head of the Sixth Form at the College, said, " These victories have given a tremendous fillip to the morale of the team and everyone else in the College. We are very proud of them."


The photograph shows the Carshalton team: Elliot Colburn, Dan Kent and Matthew Bosley.

Background and Plans for This Year’s Concert


The Rotary Club of Sutton Nonsuch is the newest Rotary Club in the Sutton area (but not that new – we were formed in 1986!). As our name suggests our origins are around the Nonsuch Park area which borders Worcester Park, Cheam, Stoneleigh and Ewell.

A few years ago when we were reviewing our activities one of our members, David Hagger, suggested that as our Club name was directly associated with Nonsuch we should be building relationships with and assisting other organisations associated with Nonsuch. That brought us into contact with The Friends of Nonsuch.

The Friends of Nonsuch is a charity formed in 1991 to fight for the preservation of the Nonsuch Park Estate as an open space accessible to all. Their original very successful campaign highlighted the need for conservation work on the Grade II Listed Georgian Mansion House and since then groups of volunteers have been restoring the Mansion. The Friends also have groups researching the history of the site and are very much concerned with the conservation of the parklands and gardens of Nonsuch Park. The Service Wing Museum was opened to the public in 1993 which details the history of the site and also shows how a working service wing would have looked in the nineteenth century. To find out more about visiting the Mansion visit their website.

To finance their restoration work The Friends hold a number of fund raising activities, one of which was a Jazz Concert in the gardens of the Mansion held on a summer’s evening. Nonsuch Rotary approached The Friends with an offer to help organise and grow this event and a partnership was agreed. We would take over the planning and management of the event in return for a share in the profits to support Rotary charities. We first helped in 2007 when the event was upgraded to a Big Band Night featuring The Dave Marrion Big Band. Last year (2008) we took over the complete management of the event and a special committee was set up that included both Club members and members of The Friends of Nonsuch to oversee the organisation.

Despite a wet evening last year there was a very strong turnout and patrons enjoyed a great evening of Big Band Music, again from The Dave Marion Big Band. The early rain soon dried up and the evening finished with many of the audience dancing to the music of Glen Miller and other famous bands from the past.

The event raised much needed funds for The Friends of Nonsuch’s restoration work and also supported Rotary’s nominated charity The Macmillan Butterfly Centre at Epsom Hospital.

Last year we invited sponsorship from local firms to support the event. Dean Kirby’s Creative Flooring was our lead sponsor and others included The IT Partnership , National Counties Building Society, Astral Conservatories, Mantle & Partners Financial Planning & Tax Advisors, Spur Garage Wimbledon, Bond Tours, Banstead Road Garage and Village Ceramics.
Sponsorship opportunities are available again this year although Dean Kirby has already agreed to be our Principal Sponsor. Further information is available on our sponsorship form or by contacting Tony Ensom (Tel: 01737 833505 Email: a.ensom@btconnect.com).


This year, 2009 a much bigger and better event is being developed. An improved stage together with a professional sound system is planned together with a change of band. This year the Jay Craig Orchestra will be performing. Led by Jay Craig, BBC Big Band’s baritone sax man, the band was formed in 2004. Its players come together from some of the best bands in the country including the BBC Big Band and the Syd Lawrence and John Wilson Orchestras.

Tickets will shortly be on sale at £14 each and will be available from selected outlets within the Nonsuch Park area or from the Big Band Box Office. For further information about buying tickets please contact John Kemp at the Box Office (Tel: 0208 786 3441 Email johnkemp1@gmail.com).

Whilst most of Nonsuch Rotary’s activities are focused on the local community, Rotary is an international organisation and all clubs also support international activities.

Rotary’s largest initiative is the eradication of polio and over the last twenty years tremendous advances have been made.

In continuing this effort the Gates Foundation announced on 21st January 2009 that it is awarding a $255 million challenge grant to Rotary, which Rotary will match with $100 million raised by its members over the next three years. At the same time, the United Kingdom government is giving an additional $150 million (£100 million) and Germany is giving an additional $130 million (€ 100 million), both to the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI).

Launched in 1988, the GPEI - spearheaded by Rotary, the World Health Organization, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and UNICEF - has reduced the number of polio cases by 99 percent over the past two decades, from more than 350,000 cases in 1988 to an estimated 1,600 in 2008.

The GPEI partners will use the new polio eradication funds to support a range of activities, including:

• National Immunisation Days, when countries aim to immunise every child under five years old with oral polio vaccine
• Supplemental immunisation activities focused on providing extra vaccinations to children in high-risk areas
• Research into new vaccines and ways to ensure they are available to vulnerable children
• Surveillance activities to detect cases of polio so that progress can be measured and outbreaks contained
  

Polio has been completely eliminated in the Americas, the Western Pacific and Europe, but the wild polio virus persists in Afghanistan, India, Nigeria, and Pakistan, and imported cases from these countries threaten other developing nations. It is in these four countries that the most serious challenges exist, including vaccine effectiveness (India), low vaccination coverage rates (Nigeria), and access problems due to conflict (Afghanistan and Pakistan). Much depends on the countries themselves. Recent progress in key areas has shown that these challenges can be overcome with sufficient national and sub-national commitment.

Further information can be found here

The Sutton heat of Rotary’s national annual contest took place at Carshalton College on Saturday 17th January. Organised by Rotarian Chris Forkan, Nonsuch Rotary’s Youth Activities Officer, contestants competed from Cheam High School, Nonsuch High School for Girls and Carshalton College.

Rotary Young Chef is a national competition open to budding young chefs aged 17 or under. They have to cook a healthy three-course meal for two people in two hours with a budget of just £14.

The contest is sponsored by Filippo Berio, the UK's favourite Olive Oil, in conjunction with Rotary and Fifteen London - the restaurant founded by Jamie Oliver.

Now in its ninth year, the Rotary Young Chef Competition was created to give young people across the UK and Ireland the chance to display their creative talents with food, while discovering the importance of healthy eating.

The Rotary Young Chef wins a trip for two to Tuscany to visit Filippo Berio's amazing olive groves and sample the delights of Italian cuisine, as well as being treated to a one-day cookery session in the kitchen of Fifteen London restaurant.

Adam Arfaoui, aged 13 from Cheam High School, won the Sutton round and now goes forward to the District and hopefully the National final.

Contest judge, Matt Burns , Head Chef at The Dom, praised Adam’s performance and commented "The overall standard was very high and the cooking certainly good enough to be served to customers in a restaurant. We were particularly impressed by the professionalism of the students in the kitchen and the serious way they got on with their tasks".


The Mayor of Sutton, Councillor Dr Brendan Hudson, presented Adam with the winner's plaque after adding his own congratulations to him and the other competitors.

The menu chosen by Adam was:

The District final will be held at Merton College on Saturday 21st February and the National Final at North Herts College, Arts Centre, Hitchin, on Saturday 2nd May.