Gujarati Samaj of Houston Elects President, VP, and Committee for 2024

Added by Indo American News on December 1, 2023.
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Photo: from Left to right Kishor Patel – EC committee, Vasant Patel – EC, Parimal Rathod – President, Girish Naik – Vice president, Rakesh Shah – Chief Trustee, Sanjay Chauvan – EC Front row: Prakash Desai – Trustee and Geeta Patel – Trustee

HOUSTON Gujarati Samaj of Houston has been celebrating our traditional festivals such as Navaratri and Diwali since its inception in 1979.  It is the oldest organization that celebrates Navaratri for all the nine days of this festival.

During Navaratri it is also a time for the members to commit themselves to the samaj by becoming member of the samaj for the coming year.   Every two years during Navaratri, the Gujarati Samaj holds elections to elect new president, Vice President, Executive committee and Trustee committee.

Normally elections are avoided when you do not have enough people standing for positions and in that case the president/Vice president will have to select the members for executive committee.   This year was very different, we had 2 different panels running for the positions and hence became a very historical election.  All positions had more people running for those positions. There were 22 members standing for the Executive committee and only 14 positions. 2 members for President, 2 members for Vice president and 4 members for Trustee with only 3 positions.

The elections took place on Oct 21, 2023 at the Gujarati Samaj of Houston Event Center from 7:00 PM to 11:30 PM.  The counting was done the next day and announced that day.

This year the following members were elected and will serve the samaj for 2 years team.

President – Parimal Rathod

Vice President – Girish Naik

Executive Committee

Mehul Desai, Paresh Desai,  Kishorbhai Patel, Sanjay Chauhan, Vasant Patel, Minaben Hingu, Ila Joshi, Heena Jethva, Bharat Shah, Bhavisha Patel, Gopalbhai Selani, Devesh Parikh, Rupen Patel and Kapil Mittal

Trustees

Rakesh Shah, Geeta Patel, Jignesh Patel

Rakesh Shah was later elected as the Chief Trustee of the Samaj in the internal trustee voting.

The Vision and objectives of the current committee is to build Gujarati Samaj Pride by enhancing member benefits giving them full value of the membership.

Our initiatives for the year:

  • Kids/Youth programs – Trips tiro Museums, Educational seminars for youth, Scholarship for deserving Gujarati students and Graduation Party
  • Women Empowerment program consisting of various topic such as Safety, leadership and women related other issues.
  • Senior engagement – give seniors the opportunity to volunteer, attend programs at a very minimal cost or Free
  • Celebration of our major festivals
  • Reforms to our monthly publication Darpan – Digital copy and communication portals.