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Acknowledgement
24 May 2013
Congratulations to all for a successful Mela 2013 that was held on May 19th. Kudos to all the kids, culture teachers, volunteers and parents for a great team work and a well coordinated effort. Brief highlights of this event titled Parsippany Mela - NJ is scheduled to air on TV Asia Community Roundup program on May 25th at 10:30pm (ET) and repeated for West Coast viewers at 11:30pm (PT). This program will also be repeated on May 26th at 4:00pm (ET).
We had over 1200 visitors and over 150 volunteers participating in this event. At this time, I would like to recognize the participants for their tremendous work in no particular order.
- Culture Teachers You were simply superb!!! Everyone saw the fruits of your vision. The culture booths were full of knowledge, and fun at the same time. Hema Popat and Malini Arora ...my utmost regards to you and your team.
- Decorations team Neeta Rathi and Tanu Mehrotra ... your team set the tone of a great start by creating the environment of an Indian village at the Gym Entrance. The map of India behind the stage and the cut-outs of various states in the corridors were beautiful. A wonderful job! Thanks to the creativity of your team!!
- Setup team Samir Patel and Daxesh Patel.. Excellent job by your team! Setup was ready in time for other teams to do their work. All the supplies were available on time. Cleanup also got completed very quickly and efficiently.
- Registration team Mahendra Patel, Umesh Mittal & team- great job guys. Umesh... you got the envelopes ready for all the families - all by yourself. Mahendra... registration went very smooth. Niraj Joshi... I would like to thank you and your father for getting registrations started early on. This team sold over $1,500 in raffle tickets - Great job guys!
- Stage Management team A very well managed effort - Rajesh Sansi, Mayank Goswami & team - hats off to you!!! You kept track of the audio and microphones requirements for various items and worked very efficiently with all the participants and the audio guys.
- Prayer & Anthem Mukesh Dave and Anju Saran...you kicked off the event with shlokas that we love and cherish. American National Anthem went very well. It was our first attempt to have eight girls singing the anthem in their sweet voices - it was a great accomplishment indeed!!
- Cultural Items We got a good mix of items on the stage. Thanks to all the participants! Fashion show was a big hit!! Asmita Mistry- what an idea! Congratulations!! Both the Gangnam dances were very well liked. Arya's DancerSize got an excellent involvement from the audience. Eagle Martial Arts demo was tremendous.
- MCs Vineeta Khanna and Anurag Rochlani... your children MCs did an excellent job of introducing the items. The Orator-r-us program has always been providing great results for the past many years. Keep up the great work!!
- Brochure Design Praveen Mehrotra ... An excellent job! I still can't understand how you manage to do so many things in parallel and still managed to get the brochure done in time with dozens of iterations. Purva Dave... thank you for a great cover design.
- Photography Sanjai Narain and Sreenivas Yalamanchili - both were busy taking pictures using their fancy cameras throughout the show and after wards. I know many others also took the pictures, we'll try to get them in one place and post them on Vidyalaya Website so that everyone can access them.
- Fund Raising Bala Iyer & team - Thank you for getting the sponsors and the raffle prizes! An event of this magnitude can't be successful without the contributions from our sponsors. We had at least 14 sponsors and the Flat panel LED HDTV was a big motivator for people to buy raffle tickets. Thanks to Mahendra for buying the TV and bringing it in. We had quite a few big name sponsors in the gym with us - Billy Singh from Park Avenue Securities, Satish Mehtani from Mogul Restaurants, Sunil Hali from Indian Express/Divya Bhaskar. Great job guys!!!
- Dignitaries Thanks to Monisha Khadse and Sunil Neela for arranging a series of prominent dignitaries for the show and arranging for their gifts!! Some of them were - Congressman Rodney Frelinghuysen; Mayor of Parsippany-Troy Hills Jamie Barbiero; Chief William Schievella, President NJ Police Community Affairs Officers Association; Councilman Parsippany-Troy Hills Michael de Pierro; Ragini Goel, Morris County Human Relations Commission. A great addition to the overall show indeed!!
- Lunch It was a big attraction for the audience and the quality of food was great - thanks to Ashirwad Restaurant. Pradeep Vashisthand Mahendra Patel... your team rocked!! Mayank Goswami, Saurabh Kumar, Sridhar Gollamudi, Devesh Shah, Saurabh Gupta and our student teachers - Abhi Tadakamalla, Bharvi Patel, Eshan Saran, Keshav Sota, Shagun Vashisth and Shreya Khajuria - great job team!!!
- Media Coverage Thanks to Anil Khajuria, Brijesh Desai and Devesh Shah. We had the coverage from TV Asia, Indian Express/Divya Bhaskar. The TV Asia coverage will be shown in Community News as indicated at the top of the email.
- Publicity Anil Khajuria, Shalini Mehrotra and team... I know you folks had a tough job of finding street corners and the front of the houses where street signs could be placed. Also, to distribute the flyers around the libraries and stores. Thank you for all your efforts!
- Henna, Face Painting & Tattoo Shalini Mehrotra, Anju Saran & team - your team was working hard while others were enjoying and the results were obvious. We could see a lot of faces and hands with creative designs all over the place. A wonderful job indeed!!!
- Booth Reporters Our Student teachers were assigned the responsibility of making sure that all the culture booths get video coverage and the interviews of the students/teachers get taken. Based on what I've heard, it went pretty well. I'll wait for the DVD to come out to watch it in details. Kudos to all of you - Abhi Tadakamalla, Bharvi Patel, Eshan Saran, Keshav Sota, Shagun Vashisth and Shreya Khajuria.
- Videography A two camera setup by Susheel Pongurlekar from Creative Vision! I'm hoping for the Master DVD by June 1st followed by the copies.
- Audio The sound quality was provided by Vinayak Ranade, Amruta Pachegaokar. A good coordination with Rajesh Sansi and Mayank Goswami.
In addition, we had a visit from the Fire Marshall to check for the fire regulations, another visit from a Parsippany Health officer to check-up on our food distribution and everything worked out as planned. A cop was present until the end of the show and was very helpful.
I'm sure I'm missing some names and would like to apologize for that...! Also, I know in an event of this scale there may be a couple of hiccups possible. If you would like to share your thoughts and help in future events, please contact me and we'll try to do improve further next year.
Regards,
Ravi Saran