PANCHAL SAMAJ OF ONTARIO CANADA
KEEPING YOU ENGAGED IN OUR COMMUNITY
President’s Message

Dear Members of the Panchal Samaj,

It is with immense pleasure that I continue to serve you for a 2nd term as President for the year 2026 and 2027. I am very thankful to you for giving me this opportunity again. It will be an honor to serve you with many of our existing committee members. I am very excited to welcome 2 new members and look forward to continuing the great work with them.

In the last 2 years we have boldly introduced many new initiatives, while making sure our members enjoyed each event thoroughly. We started off with a fun packed Youth event, the 1st Indoor Seniors event and Picnic. As promised, we very successfully restarted our own PSO Garba at Gur Mandir, both our Diwali Events were well attended with impressive participation from our Youth and at the end of each year our Kids Christmas Parties are more fun and exciting, thanks to our creative Program Coordinators Manisha Engineer and Nileshbhai Panchal.

Here is a breakdown of the initiatives we have accomplished in the last 2 years:

  • Our very 1st task: to create a Whatsapp Channel for all updates and reminders in addition to emails. Thanks to Rakeshbhai Mistry you have easy access to all the messages, all in one place.
  • The Early Bird pricing, member/non member pricing encouraged more members to pay their yearly membership fee and buy tickets in advance so my team and I are able to organise food, seating etc. more efficiently
  • Thanks to Rakeshbhai & the committee for implementing E-ticketing/QR Codes/Wrist Bands, allowing us to visibly track and account for attendance at events, eliminating ticket printing and distribution, as we adopt digital methods.
  • Thanks to Amitbhai Panchal, you are now receiving email confirmation for membership renewal and event tickets.
  • Keeping up with technological advances, I took on the task of recruiting a voluntary Technical Team who were introduced to you at the Diwali Show. Rakeshbhai Mistry who was handling everything alone, now takes care of the website and other technical projects, Siddharth Mistry creates all emails and Whatsapp Messages and Ashani Panchal keeps the social media pages up to date.
  • You will notice that our team is trying to reach out to everyone and all ages. We have worked hard to use English and Gujarati wherever we can. On emails, WhatsApp, instructions at events and also when presenting to you.
  • Our team uses Google meet for some of our committee meetings and so we are still getting things done efficiently even if it’s remotely.
  • The Indoor Seniors event was received very well with activities like Yoga, games like Caram, Bingo and Antakshri, we served delicious warm food to our seniors, and sent them away with a gift.
  • We restarted our very own PSO Garba which was a big success and so in 2025 the arrangements were bigger and better, in a Banquet Hall with food included and a fabulous DJ.
  • At the Children’s Christmas party, PSO now contributes to and organises gifts to be given to each child, with help from Samaj Sponsors.
  • Our committee decided to introduce table seating for the Diwali Event, which is a lot of work. However, Manisha T and Amishbhai have done a wonderful job with assigning seats and designing a beautiful Seating Display.
  • In 2024-2025 our samaj has been introduced to so many new businesses within our samaj and from outside the community. We have had so much positive feedback for this. Sponsorship works for both parties: we receive financial support to arrange more enjoyable events for the samaj and businesses get exposure in our community through the Booklet, Social Media, Emails and the Whatsapp Channel. This has been a big help to our samaj.
  • I feel it’s important for our community to contribute in a healthy way to the environment and the outside community, and so we have executed recycling initiatives and ways to give back to charities like Alzheimer’s, Food banks etc.
  • I am happy to say we have closed all outstanding tasks that were started by the last committee: Thanks to Rameshuncle and Rekhafoi we now have a fully amended, updated and printed Constitution; Thanks to Rameshuncle and Rajeshbhai, we have managed to declutter past documents and scan them so that they are available on the Samaj hard drive; thanks to Harshad uncle & Manisha Panchal we have a clean and organised Hard Drive with all past documents and photos.
  • Finally, during our term, our Treasurer Falguni and Board of Trustee Vasantfuva have worked diligently to update Quick Books for all our accounting to be digital and they continue to maintain this complex process.

I have to say, though, these new initiatives have been so successful because you, our samaj, working alongside us. So thank you for RSVPing, taking note of the different pricing structure, buying your tickets in advance, joining our Whatsapp Channel (if you haven’t joined, it’s never too late!), sponsoring the samaj, following our GREEN INITIATIVES, contributing to the charities and using e-transfer more and more.

In closing, I would like to say: look out for more new and exciting initiatives we will bring to you as we celebrate our 40th Anniversary this year. We hope to make it one to remember, so make sure you come join us at each event!

Best Regards,
Alpa Panchal,
President 2026- 2027
Panchal Samaj of Ontario