Manikanta Pachineelam – our silent techie !!

Well, here is another of our silent heroes – Manikanta Pachineelam. He is the techie who takes care of our website. How many times we go to him with all the changes? Mani, can you change the menu item, can you add this event, can you change the flier, can you add a registration page, can you change the registration page details – never ending requests. And what do we get back? Changes done in no time with no questions asked and no complaints. We wonder how can he be so patient.

Mani has been with Janyaa from 2009. He has been helping us since then. What would we do without him. And we bet you have never seen him in any pics. That’s because all he cares about is Janyaa and not himself. He is another person in the team who doesn’t care about showing off, doesn’t want his pictures published or who doesn’t care about “recognition”. He just does his part in supporting Janyaa.

Janyaa is blessed to have someone like him in the team. And to add to this, his newly wed wife Veena donates money on her birthday to Janyaa. A perfect match for him. Her support to him is what it makes more special.

Thank you Mani and Veena for all your support to Janyaa. You guys are awesome.

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Kaushik Macherla – Our Silent Hero !

Our experience tells us that when a person genuinely believes in a cause and works passionately for the same without expecting recognition/titles etc in return – that person will stick to the cause for good and ends up doing a fabulous job. Once you do your job well, fame follows. Or else you are more worried about gaining a name for yourself than benefiting the needy. Janyaa is privileged to have such people who have stuck with us for years. Kaushik is one such hero.

Kaushik joined us because he believed. He believed in the concept, he believed in the people, he believed in the benefits children get from our work. Since 2009 he has taken up so many roles, handled variety of tasks from designing experiments, bringing sponsors, spreading the word at various events – to cleaning up after a fundraising event, to being a delivery boy to what not. Never did he find a task less or more important. He knew every bit counts and that we should roll up our sleeves and work to make it happen. If we need anything, the first person that comes to our mind is Kaushik. And he always says ‘yes’. He never worried about having a title or position or being on the stage or having his name splashed – nothing. All he focused on was the work to be done.

This year is extra special for Janyaa because we revamped the whole set of experiments. We added lot more, we added very creative/simple tools to teach Math, we adopted different techniques in our experiments, increased the quality and many other aspects for the children. Kaushik worked very hard from April in bringing these together. He helped in designing, coordinating with others, validating their experiments by checking the material/cost, making sure we are providing a simple but effective solution. We know how many long hours he spent over months to make this happen.

Thank you Kaushik. We don’t know what we would do without you. You made this happen. You delivered. You added lot of value to Janyaa and that’s what matters in the end. Janyaa is lucky to have you.

We would also like to thank his better half Aarti Gupta for supporting him because without her understanding and support to Janyaa, it wouldn’t have been possible for him. Hats off to you girl. You are amazing.

*– Venu & Usha

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Thank you to all the volunteers of Utsav 2012

Taking time off from your family and spending time volunteering for a cause is not easy over the weekend. Sure, you are doing something nice to the community, but you only have a weekend to spend with your family. And that entire weekend was donated to Janyaa for Utsav 2012.

We sincerely appreciate the time and effort each and everyone of you have put into this event. There was lot of work done prior to the event – designing the fliers, marketing, coordinating etc etc. And we needed volunteers in huge numbers. Our friends, colleagues and strangers – everyone chipped in.

Here is a small tribute to you all: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10151215729627376.479042.333664352375&type=1

There are many more who helped us prior to the event and also during the event. It’s just that we don’t have the pictures.

Thank you Sunil Khemchand, Vikrant Sisodia for helping with Dandia event. We know it wasn’t easy. You guys did an amazing job.

We hope we didn’t miss anyone. But if we did, we sincerely apologize for the lapse. Kindly reach out to us at volunteer@janyaa.org and we will publish. Thank you all for all your time and support.

 

Janyaa, a 501c(3) organization set up in 2009, focuses on developing creative problem solving skills in rural kids in India. The name, Janyaa, which translates to “life” appropriately fits with the vision of this organization. Please send your feedback on our program, events or the newsletter to info@janyaa.org. We appreciate your support and time.

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Janyaa Summerbash 2012

August 2012

Rediscover your inner child to support a child

Remember the fun we had playing all the games when growing up India.  The ever exciting Lagori/seven stones, concentration testing lemon and spoon, the physical tug-of-war, musical Antaskhari, funny 4 corners and  playing tambola during family events. We all wish our kids and certainly we could experience the same in the US.

Our idea was born out of this wish. Janyaa’s summer bash was all about celebrating these wonderful games with family, friends and importantly delicious food. It was equally exciting for us to organize this event as was for the participants. Held on August 4th at the Ponderosa park in Sunnyvale, it was an exciting evening which took many of us down the memory lane. Adding to the excitement was Face Painting and Henna, and yes there were plenty of prizes.

We thank all the volunteers and participants for helping us organize and enjoy this event. Janyaa’s goal of “Rediscover your inner child to support a child” was well achieved. We look forward to doing this again and help keep these games alive.

What a wonderful way to support a child.

Please also see our news coverage in The Indian Express, West Coast. A big thanks to The Indian Express team for this well written article. Courtesy: The Indian Express, North American Edition

Click below to enlarge.

Janyaa, a 501c(3) organization set up in 2009, focuses on developing creative problem solving skills in rural kids in India. The name, Janyaa, which translates to “life” appropriately fits with the vision of this organization. Please send your feedback on our program, events or the newsletter to Janyaa. We appreciate your support and time.

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Extreme Volunteers: Overtime for India’s underprivileged

Here is an article on our founder Venu Nadella. It was published in SAP´s employee channel SAP News today as part of their Extreme Volunteers series.

Venupriya Nadella recognized the need for a more empowering form of education for under-privileged children in India and decided to take action. Thousands of Indian school children are now benefiting from her work.

Venupriya (Venu) Nadella

As a student, Venupriya (Venu) Nadella’s mind wasn’t just focused on her own education. She was looking deeper into the social problems around her and noticing how gaps in the education system were limiting the mindsets and the future opportunities of India’s young people.

As she embarked on her own career path, Venu simultaneously began a journey of learning, researching, and strategizing an effective way to make a difference in children’s lives through education.

Eventually Venu launched Janyaa – which means ‘Life’ in the Sanskrit language – a charitable organization dedicated to enriching the learning experience of rural Indian school children in a way that prepares them for future leadership roles.

Insider insights

Through Venu’s own education and her observations she realized something was missing. “I perceived that underprivileged children were being taught to memorize but not to learn; to see, but not to do; to follow directions; but not to innovate. I realized a special initiative was necessary – a program that didn’t just provide academic knowledge, but helped children in solving real life problems,” says Venu.

Career opportunities took Venu to Australia and the United States, where she was exposed to different cultures and new approaches to working and learning, including experiential and hands-on learning techniques.

Venu’s desire was for all children in India to become creative problem solvers by learning such techniques. With these new ways of thinking, , they would strive for a better standard of living than that of their parents.

Ideas become reality

Venu started brainstorming with friends and colleagues about how her ideas might look in reality, and in April 2009, with their help, she founded Janyaa.  Janyaa provides innovative curriculum based science and mathematics training to children aged 10 – 15 years.  The program does so in a way that gives the children opportunities to design and implement their own solutions to issues faced by their parents and neighbors.

“Students of schools that have implemented the Janyaa program are now being equipped to take on the problems facing their generation, rather than just accept the existence of such problems,” says Venu.

With support through official channels, along with generous donations, the organization has rapidly expanded to impact a large number of children in a short span of time. In 2009, Janyaa targeted 800 students. Venu devised a model that guides Janyaa’s growth, which made it possible to scale the program to reach 20,000 students in 2011.

Janyaa is now operating programs in 210 schools and has gained the attention and approval of government and school officials. There are big ambitions for the future, too: Venu is on track for achieving her goal of reaching 50,000 students this year.

This growth was partly made possible due to financial assistance from SAP employees. When Venu organized fundraising events at SAP, she was blown away by the support she received from colleagues, including help with administrative tasks.

Venu is now encouraging more SAP employees to get involved: “We need both financial and volunteering support,” she says. “Employees interested in making a positive impact with their spare time can get in touch with me directly to discuss volunteering opportunities from either abroad or on the ground in India.”

The Janyaa team hopes to raise USD 40,000 this year by targeting large organizations (for example, the Livermore Hindu Temple in California recently donated a grant) and individuals alike. “I think employees will be surprised by how much Janyaa can achieve with their donations – for example with USD10 per paycheck an entire school could be supported with the Janyaa program for 3 years!” she says.

Juggling work and charity work

Finding time for her personal life was almost impossible for Venu initially, as she devoted all her spare hours outside of her SAP role to setting up Janyaa. The task was made even more challenging because Venu developed and launched the program remotely – she is based in Palo Alto as a development manager in the Sales on Demand group.

She utilized her contacts in India to identify the right schools to target, secure permission from the authorities, and implement the program. In the beginning stages she spend three to four hours daily on calls to India, but in 2011 Janyaa was able to hire its first employee, which has helped Venu get a bit more balance in her life.

There have been times when Venu’s friends and family members have also questioned her commitment to both her career and charity ambitions, suggesting she can easily donate money to good causes instead of taking on so much responsibility to run one herself.

But Venu is on her way to seeing a major transformation take place in many schools and communities of her home country. And seeing how much the children love and are benefiting from the Janyaa program, motivates her to keep going with it.

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Story of our Arpana event – showing the commitment of Janyaa volunteers

Considering the amount of effort that went into it and the way the event was executed against all odds, we decided to share our story with you all. Here is the story of our Arpana event.

We were approached by Pampa dance academy in Nov 2011 where they wanted to do a fundraising event for Janyaa on their 20^th anniversary. They will be having a show of their own on April 7^th evening and they are offering to do a show for Janyaa from 3-5PM on the same day. This is a very nice gesture from them.

But there were quite a few challenges we could foresee. So far Janyaa has focused it’s fundraising events on sport based events like Volleyball, Badminton etc. We have done few mixer events where the max number of participants was around 60-70 people. So we were very apprehensive of taking this up as we had the huge challenge of filling up a 500 seat capacity hall. Moreover we knew we were up against the evening show from the same group. This means we cannot count on the tickets from the students’ families/friends as they would obviously go for the evening show. And most importantly the price we had to pay for Pampa was extremely high for our standards as we could not foresee even meeting their cost.

We went through a lot of discussions with the team and we went back to Pampa asking for reduction in cost. They came up with a proposal which sounded reasonable. We had to pay half of the fee initially and then pay the balance if we meet our expectations. In the hindsight this worked out for us coz we just met our expectations. We wouldn’t have been able to pay their fee in the end with the money we made. So with the new proposal, we thought let’s give it a try. We met Pampa and told them all about our organization and our apprehensions in taking this up. Told them that we never organized a cultural event where we had more than 60 people and getting 500 people is  a huge challenge for us along with finding sponsors etc. Told them upfront all our limitations just that we can be on the same page. They were very supportive and said they can work with us on this.

We signed a MOU and we honored every single item in the MOU. We are pleased to hear that Nirmala from Pampa acknowledged the same in a meeting with our founder. We had regular meetings with Pampa to discuss the progress.  Janyaa team was meeting twice a week to discuss the progress and also to get updates from Pampa via Venu who was attending meetings with Pampa on behalf of Janyaa team. We always optimized our time for meetings by sending a rep from Janyaa. We are very efficient and very conscious about the time of every person in the team.  In fact our event lead is the one who attends any meetings with partners. Just like Usha is the only person who attends any meetings with Spandana for Volleyball tournament. We managed these meetings very efficiently.

So the journey has started. We started off with the flier design in Dec and getting commitment from volunteers. As with any other event we do, we created a Google document to list out the tasks and assigned team members. It was a huge list from posting fliers, selling tickets personally, getting sponsors etc etc. We got support from various people in selling our tickets. Everything looked hunky dory till almost end of Feb. And then the date conflict – BATA is celebrating their 40^th anniversary on the same day. Couple of people who promised to sell nearly 200 tickets for us backed out as people preferred to go to that event. Sure, we were disappointed, but then we took it up as a challenge and decided to target other groups. Then comes the second date conflict that Stanford Holi is happening on the same day. This is a biggie as we know nearly 10,000 people attend that event and they were no way going to miss that and come to our classical show. While distributing fliers at other events we came to know from our fellow booths that there are other events happening on same day. Few of our friends backed out in last couple of weeks as they had plans for spring break/ Easter holidays.

You can see how this impacts the motivation levels of our team. We alerted Pampa that we may not be able to meet the 500 ticket target. Decision was to be made whether we should cancel the show or continue with it.  We had a meeting about 2-3 weeks before the show and we expressed our concern. We had detailed discussion and gave them the numbers on how many we expect to sell. A consensus was made that we proceed with the show. And so we continued with our marketing efforts.

Janyaa team has put in tremendous amount of hours into preparing and marketing this event starting Dec 2011. We had 4 people to post fliers in Sunnyvale, Santa Clara, Milpitas and Fremont areas. They had to post fliers at regular intervals as they are often taken out by the stores after a period of time. This itself was a huge task in itself as you never know when the posters are removed. It could even happen the very next day you posted. Well, we managed it well. We were sending regular emails to our mailing list, we were posting regular updates on Facebook, approaching people personally, trying to sell tickets at other events – well we tried every avenue we could see. We promoted Pampa heavily in every email of ours, every post on FB, we published their pics on our FB pages and every other avenue.

We cancelled our annual Holi event in March so that we could focus entirely on Arpana event. Sure, this has got some of our team members disappointed, but we wanted to focus all our efforts on this event. We were up against so many events that were happening on that day including BATA 40th anniversary (where we lost nearly 200 tickets that were promised by our supporters), Stanford holi (where nearly 10,000 people attend), Kannada/Telugu New year programs, Spring break, Easter break, other classical events, cultural events and many more. We were even asked to change the date. But it was not in our hands as it was Pampa’s decision. Nevertheless the team went with complete force and managed to make it a success.  Being a baby organization and very new to organizing any such event we believe we have done a great job.

We received a great compliment from one of the dance schools that we promoted Pampa to such a great extent that they wanted to do an event with us. It’s true. Every email that went out was talking about Pampa. Ironically, few of our friends knew about Pampa’s evening show, but did not know about our 3PM show as they could not find the details on Pampa’s site. Once they came to know about our show, they bought tickets to our show – very nice of them. Once the 7PM show was full, Pampa offered to promote our show on their website. We are grateful to Pampa for the same. Pampa has offered help with fine tuning of the flier, guiding us on what should go into the video, on approaching other dance schools to promote our event etc. We sincerely thank Pampa for their support.

Janyaa team received support from all over and we had so many people trying to help us in spite of the obstacles we were facing with other events. We would like to thank each and everyone for the same. We are sure we might have missed couple of things here and there as this is the first time we have done such an event and that too at such a huge scale. We apologize for the same, but we assure we have learnt from our mistakes and we will make sure we will do better next time.

This is our story – the story about the grit of Janyaa team and volunteers who worked against all odds in making this event happen. We knew we had more at stake than Pampa in making this event a success because their experience will show in their performance. But for us this is our first major event. People could see how much went into this event from our side and we have been receiving accolades from all our supporters for the effort we put in. Everyone who knows about Janyaa, our team, our organization – appreciated the time and effort that went into execution of this event against all odds. They have seen us execute before (Our first ever Volleyball tournament brought in 70 teams – a record. We still receive compliments from people about that event). It wasn’t easy for sure. But we did it. We made enough money to cover our costs, pay Pampa and a profit that equals Pampa price. Next time we hope to make more money than what we paid Pampa. That would be an achievement for sure.

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It is just April and we already achieved a lot…

We went live with our new website on Jan 1st – Thanks to Mani for all the hard work and Rajesh for the design guidance.

We got our brochures printed – thanks to Rajesh for the design idea and Venu for getting it printed free of cost 🙂

We got our mission statement ready – thanks to Colin (SAP Marketing Director) and Prasad Akella (SVP, Marketing)

We got our tagline ready – Thanks to Mamatha and Sravanthi and input from most of you.

We got our concept for posters ready – thanks to Usha, Kaushik and Rajesh

We got our posters, banner, visiting cards design ready – Thanks to Maria Bonita who has done this with amazing speed

Posters, cards and banner will be ready in a week’s time or so – Thanks to Kaushik and Venu

We are getting Janyaa article printed on SAP portal – work in progress. Thanks to Mamatha for squeezing her time in spite of her busy schedule

We are setting up a booth at TieCon 2012 on May 18th and 19th – this is another biggie for us. Any help appreciated 🙂

WOW!!! That’s a huge list already. This is apart from our Arpana event and the Volleyball event planned for May 19th.

We are a great team and let’s continue to be one. :). And I must mention there are so many others who helped us out in every possible way to reach this stage. A big thank you to all.

Let me add to this on what we have achieved since then:

TiEcon was extremely successful.  https://janyaa.wordpress.com/2012/05/23/janyaa-at-tiecon-2012-what-a-wonderful-experience-16/

We are working with Senior citizens of Cupertino in developing Math games. They are very well accomplished people and am honored to have them working for us. I must say I have never seen so many intelligent, successful people at one place.

We will be working with Mahesh Lalwani in developing end of year projects for our children.

We will be working with Charitra team to help us scale globally https://projectcharitra.sap.com/

We have volunteers helping us establishing partnerships with other NPOs, helping us with marketing our events (this is a biggie for us as we we were lagging behind on this big time) and many more.

Now this is a huge list for just month of May.  Don’t you think?

Cheers

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Amazing Janyaa team !!!

Yes, we have a great team at Janyaa. Or else how could we reach 20,000 rural children in just a matter of 3 years? We cannot afford to hire people to get work done and like any budding non-profit organization we depend primarily on support from our volunteers along with friends, family, donors and sponsors.

Our Arpana event was a huge success yesterday and here is a small tribute to all who contributed to it.

No event can be successful without the support from sponsors. A big thank you to all our sponsors: http://janyaa.org/new/?page_id=405. Samosas from New India Bazaar and Pongal from Dosa Bawarchi Miliptas was too good. And of course the sweet made by our dear friend Gayatri Palepu was out of the world.  Thank you all.

Special thanks to our families for supporting us by allowing us to spend time in making this event successful. It’s not easy to take care of domestic things on your own while your partner is helping us out. We sincerely thank you all.

There were lot of people who have supported us in various ways in making this event successful. We feel blessed to have all of them in our lives. Thank you Mohan Nannapaneni, Tarun Kakani, Ena Sarkar, Apeksha Anand, Anwesa Garg, Madan & Rani Arora, Geeta Parthasarathi, Mamatha Rathnam, Sarah Cramer, Hema Reddy and many more. Here is  a small thank you note from all of us at Janyaa: https://janyaa.wordpress.com/2012/03/19/feel-blessed/

Last but not the least all of the Janyaa team without whom we wouldn’t have reached this stage.

Kaushik Macherla – Outstanding volunteer of Janyaa. We cannot imagine doing any event without Kaushik’s support. he is all over the place and we do not even know where to start thanking him. He has taken care of so many things for this event, the list only gets bigger and bigger as we think about it. He is not only very forthcoming in picking up the tasks, he also steps in at the last minute for any emergency situations. Even yesterday he saved us from last minute situations. Thank you Kaushik, you are an integral part of Janyaa and we cannot imagine Janyaa without you.

Manikanta Pachineelam, Harsha Krishnareddy, Chaitanya Kuntamukkala and Usha Hanumolu: They have taken care of posting updates to website about the event, preparing pledge sheets, email marketing, FB etc. Thank you guys for handling all of these. We appreciate your time.

Usha Hanumolu, Rashi Khare, Chinmaya Sarangi, Aarthi Veerapandiyan, Manogna Raviprolu : Our registration desk and Pledge collection team. Thank you all for handling your tasks very efficiently and also helping us with other tasks like, food packing, grocery shopping etc.

Madhu Dama, Rajesh Shastry, Jani Mahammad, Pratyush Chandra: Our ticket collecting team. It’s not just about collecting tickets and giving brochures but also ensuring people are let into the auditorium without disturbing the lighting inside etc. You guys have done a great job.

Srini Vallurupalli, Chaitali Gohel, Harsha Krishnareddy, Ramadasu Puli, Gayatri Palepu: Thank you all for taking care of this task by packing the food on time and food sale.

Finally, we would like to thank Pampa Dance Academy for partnering with us. Special thanks to Bindu Madhav, Nirmala Madhav, Lavanya and Kamakshi for all the support they have given.

All in all, this event was made successful with wonderful team work from all of you. Thank you all. We couldn’t have done this without you.

There are so many others who helped us in many ways. Thank you all for all your support.

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Friday Night Out – Aug 26th Fun event!!

We had a fun filled evening on Friday Aug 26th. We at Janyaa would like to thank all of our friends and supporters who attended the event and made it a great success. A big thank you to all of the volunteers, many of whom had to directly come from work through the crazy Friday evening traffic, esp. Kaushik, Amit, Usha, Rama Dasu,Venu and Kranthi.

We started off with Dumb Charades and Antakshari which turned out to be a lot of fun. Everyone participated in the games with enthusiasm!!It was followed by a delicious dinner and dancing.

Thank You Pavan Nichenametla for sponsoring all of the food!!

Hema Reddy –  Thank you for being our official photographer . We are looking forward to seeing our pictures through your camera.

Special thanks to the following volunteers:

Amit did an excellent job with hosting of Antakshari and also as our DJ. We had a great time dancing away and it was a lot of fun!!

Kranthi – thank you for the announcements and hosting Antakshari along with Amit, with great enthusiasm.

Rama Dasu and Kaushik – Thanks for help with the signs and set up of materials, picking up food, signing up guests at the registration and helping with wrapping up everything at the end of the event.

Ila & her Mom, and Rama – Great help at the Registration desk. We appreciate you being at the entrance while other volunteers could completely focus on conducting the program smoothly. Thank You!

Gayatri – Great job on starting the event with Dumb Charades and Antakshari; hosting and conducting it so beautifully. We also thank you for making a yummy dessert – Badam Halwa. It was excellent.

Usha, Venu and anyone whom I may have missed–  thank you for your support on the back end of organizing this event and making it happen. Of course Venu is a great motivator and inspiration for all that we do.

We would also like to thank Harini at TIE. She was in constant communication, in case we needed help on the audio systems or projectors etc. In spite of being off for the weekend and having personal plans on Friday evening, she made sure that she was accessible, if any assistance was needed, as this was our first time at the venue.

I enjoy being a part of Janyaa and love to do whatever I can in helping out. I had a great time! (Sharmila here!!)

Everyone loved the venue, and we are planning to host a monthly event at this venue. If you have any suggestions or comments, please feel free to post it on our Facebook page. We would love to get your feedback.

Link to pictures of the event: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150302647682376.358829.333664352375&type=1

We look forward to seeing you and your friends at future events. Please spread the word and thank you for your continuing support to Janyaa!

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Holi 2011

We had a great event at Holi 2011.  It was a great success!! Thank you all for your support and help, especially to the following volunteers.

Rajesh Prabhu : First, want to welcome you on board as volunteer – started with Holi 2011. You can’t imagine how happy I was when I saw you entering the park as one of the first persons from our volunteer team. I know you had to go around 1PM…..but you were there until the clean-up. Even though I reached out to you just before the event, your support was really great. Your handling of critical situations at the event made me very comfortable. You being the member with suggestions/contributions to events will help Janyaa a lot. Thank you for all the help Rajesh.

Divyesh Jain: Another young volunteer on board with Holi 2011. Helping us as the Parking Monitor while your wife and friends were waiting for you – it is just unimaginable how far the helping  attitude can take people. Thank you so much and welcome aboard, Divyesh.

Pranay Kaikini : Another youngest volunteer on board with Holi 2011. Spending 4 hours as Parking Monitor without getting time to participate in the event – I have no words to express my feelings. Your help from selling tickets to event day help are just great.  It was great help Pranay. Really appreciate it!!!

Murali Medam: Another volunteer on board with Holi 2011. Started helping with selling tickets and asking other colleagues to help. Murali, if you were not available that day – event would have been in a great trouble. When the generator was not fitting in Chinmaya’s car, we needed someone with bigger vehicle. Murali immediately drove and went to get the generator. After the event is over while driving back, we realized we forgot a water bottle that was borrowed from another volunteer. So called Murali again and guess what. He is available to go to the park and pick-it up. Thank you so much, Murali!

Rekha: Another new volunteer for Holi 2011. Rekha purchased tickets and came with her family to enjoy the event. When we needed some help, I approached her to see if she can handle the registration for few hours. Next second, she requested her husband to take care of kids and took over the registration. Big thank you, Rekha (and family). It was really pleasure to meet people like you.

Chaitanya Kuntamukkala:  Another new volunteer for Holi 2011. Chaitanya was very helpful in doing lot of background tasks like getting city, fire, DOH permissions, tickets printing/distribution and calling all the friends to spread the word. Chaitanya, your help is very much appreciated and welcome aboard.

  

Sesha garu: Another new volunteer for Holi 2011. Your help with selling tickets and event day parking monitor has made a great difference!! It is really great to have you….welcome aboard and appreciate your help.

Usha Hanumolu:  Your help from the day one of event planning until after the event –  is unimaginable particularly with your personal situation. Truly I was not expecting you to come to volunteer with a few weeks baby at home. It is just great. For everything that was needed on the event day – has come from your home!!  Thank you soooo much, Usha.

Savita Shenoy: Thank you very much, for your help with handling registration. When the day has started with rain/cold, I started getting worried…..it was really nice and big thank you!!!

Chinmaya Sarangi : A long time volunteer of Janyaa, your responsibility has started from the very morning with picking-up generator/tables and it ended when  you dropped-off tables at rental office. Big thank you to you, Chinmaya. Without your help, event would have been in a big problem.

Rajesh Arukala : Want to sincerely thank you for making some time on that day. I know your family had other plans that day. When I called you the day before for help, you made necessary arrangements and arrived at the event. Want to sincerely thank you and your family. Your help as parking monitor had gone a long way with gaining confidence from City. This has set a good foundation for Janyaa events in the future.

Pavan Bayyapu: Thank  you for your help on the event day, Pavan. You came to event immediately after your return from Germany trip. Appreciate your help.

Rajib Shome & Yingjiong He  : The official photographer’s of Janyaa. With all your help, Holi 2011 has become a lifetime sweet memory for all of us. Thank you very much for being there even when showers started and until the end. It was really great and want to express appreciation on behalf of everyone enjoying the photos.

Ankur  Jain: Core member of making Holi 2011 a success. Ankur helped with lot of tasks right from the day one of the event planning. Especially, Ankur has spent all the day on Saturday to arrange everything and started 7.30 AM on the event day to make arrangements. Ankur without your help, Holi 2011 would have been a dream.

Sudhon Kanagaraj: Another core member of making Holi 2011 a success. Sudhon, started with distributing fliers in Fremont/Union City area’s. Since then, his contributions to marketing/boards/parking monitoring and other help on event day was really great. Mr & Mrs Sudhon – your help was just great. It was really great to meet nice people like you.

Manikanta Panchineelam : Core member of Holi 2011 event. Mani has helped with the event starting from website set-upà fliers distribution à full day of work over event weekend. At 7AM on Saturday, Mani was at Racho San Antonio to distribute fliers to all the hikers and his day ended late evening after completing all the required tasks. He is one of the first/last person who came/left the event to/after making sure everything is set-up/cleaned. On his way back, he drove through all the parking lots to make sure everything is normal. With this kind of help, anything is possible. A big thank you for all the help Mani.

Rama Dasu Puli: The man!!! A true example of dedicated volunteer with lot of passion. Rama, helped with setting-up booths in SAP, selling tickets, buying required stuff for event and most importantly the event weekend. Rama spent whole day at the event right from setting-up until clean-up. He is one of the first/last people to enter/leave the event and took care of all the required clean-up/set-up. I am sure, dedicated volunteers like you can take Janyaa to next levels.

Kaushik Macherla: Core member of the event. Missed you a lot on the event day. Even though you had to travel to India during the event, we had no option except calling you to get your help. It was amazing support from you Kaushik. Thank you for all the help.

Jai Godora: Thank you for all your help in designing the flier for the event. We received great feedback for the same where some people were specifically asking for you. Despite being very busy at work, you accommodated our request and helped us out. Thank you very much Jai.

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