Fontenot to lead Rotary Plans to improve both community involvement and membership

By: HEATHER BOGARD
Lifestyles Editor

Longtime Rotarian Mitch Fontenot was installed as president of the Ville Platte Rotary Club for the 2015-2016 club year and began his tenure on July 1. He is appreciative of this opportunity to serve the club as president and during a recent meeting, he outlined his plans and goals for the coming year. Fontenot commended past president David Mayeux on the good work he did as president and joked that “He is not off the hook. I will be leaning on him for help.”
As president, Fontenot’s main goal is “to continue to raise awareness of the club’s presence in the community.” Some ways of achieving this goal include working with Faith House, the elderly, Chicot State Park and Relay for Life, among other things. Mayor Jennifer Vidrine, who is a member, will spearhead the club’s Shots for Tots campaign, tentatively set for October.
Another important goal for the coming year is to increase the club membership by at least 10 percent. “We recently lost several members,” Fontenot shared, “and we need to find ways to bring those lapsed members back into the fold.” He added that “it is vital to the future of the Ville Platte Rotary Club to attract new, younger members who are the future leaders of the community.” One way of doing this, Fontenot said, is to plan new community projects they care about and are passionate enough about to devote their time to. He encouraged members to become more involved and help identify areas of need throughout the community so that projects targeting those issues may be discussed and developed. The goal is to develop at least one new fund raiser and two new service projects, one with a local focus and one in conjunction with Rotary International. He also plans to form a training committee in order to better explain and promote the Rotary Club throughout the community. Fontenot would also like to see the Ville Platte club become a sustaining member club, which entails each member donating $100 to the Rotary Foundation each year.
In addition to developing new projects, Fontenot will continue with existing successful programs, such as the Sacred Heart Interact Club, Choices program, Polio Plus awareness, LSUE and technical college scholarships and Camp Ryla. With the decline in interest and applicants for the technical college scholarship, Fontenot said new ways to revive interest in and promote the scholarship were needed. He then suggested the idea of possibly putting the funds into an endowment like the LSUE scholarship. Fontenot also said that the Interact club and Rotary Club need to work more closely together on projects to get the students more involved and active in their community.
Fontenot is the son of the late Elmand and Una T. Fontenot, who raised their family in the Tate Cove area and owned and operated the Elmand Fontenot store in Tate Cove for many years. Mitch is a graduate of Sacred Heart High School and has been employed with Cameron for 28 years, where he is currently the customer service manager. Mitch’s wife, Jackie, is also a graduate of Sacred Heart and taught at Sacred Heart Elementary School for 25 years. They have two grown children, Sara Alyce, who is a speech therapist working at Mercy Regional Medical Center, and Jacob, who graduated from LSU and is now finishing up his MBA at UL-Monroe.
“My family and I are very committed to this community,” Fontenot proclaims, “and this is one of the main reasons that motivated me to be an active member of the Ville Platte Rotary Club for the last 12 years.”