Sankara Nethralaya USA: Violin and Classical Dance Concert Navarasam in Atlanta
Carnatic Strings Violin Studio founder Jassotha Balasubramaniam reached out to Sankara Nethralaya USA (SNUSA) President Bala Reddy Indurti, Trustee Neelima Gaddamanugu and expressed interest to do a fundraiser by coordinating with 8 different classical dance academies based in Atlanta.
Including her Violin academy, 9 academies did the fundraising event aptly named Navarasam on September 14th, 2024, for the noble cause of restoring vision to poor patients. It was a houseful show and many people had to stand and watch till the end. We are sorry for their inconvenience and thankful for their support to Sankara Nethralaya.
9 Violinists and 72 classical dance students from 8 different dance academies in Atlanta participated in Navarasam, depicting 9 different emotions.
Rasa, Dance academies and respective Gurus participated in the program:
- Saantham, Bheebatsam - Nataraja Natyanjali - Neelima Gaddamanugu
- Karuna - Samskrithi - Gayathri Srinivasan
- Hasyam - Noopura School of Bharatanatyam - Anila Haridas
- Adbhutam - Nritya Sankalpa - Savitha Vishwanathan
- Veeram - Deeksha School of Performing Arts - Anupa Guha Thakurta
- Rowdram - Bharathakala Naatya Academy - Subathra Sudarshan
- Shringaram - Naatyaveda Dance Academy - Sobiya Sudeep
- Bhayam - GA Cultural Arts Academy - Gayathri Venkatachalam
We gratefully acknowledge the support of all academies, Gurus and students who participated to make this event a grand success.
SNUSA Board of Advisor Dr. Raj Modi helped the program by giving a promo to take the message to masses. SNUSA Secretary Shyam Appali provided Audio Video technical help, Trustee Vamsi Krishna Eruvaram helped in promoting the event in social media.
SNUSA Founder & President Emeritus S.N. Acharya, Board of Advisors Prasad Reddy, Leela Krishnamoorthy and Treasurer Banu Ramkrishnan conveyed best wishes to the Atlanta team for the grand success.
Due to unavoidable circumstances, Chief Guest T. Ramachandra Reddy from Augusta GA, could not attend the event and we missed him. He adopted a village, and we are doing eye camp in his village Nandi Vaddeman in November 2024.
Guest of honor Dr. Kalpana Rengarajan shared her association with Sankara Nethralaya and wonderful experience about the music and dance concert.
Guest of honor Paul Lopez explained about quality glasses from Good vision and effort between Good vision and Sankara Nethralaya in India. Efforts are going on between these two organizations so that a pair of glasses can be given for just $1 to indigent patients. This proposal was facilitated by SNUSA Board of Advisor, Padma Bhushan awardee Dr. Jagdish Sheth.
Atlanta Chapter Vice President Rajesh Tadikamalla along with Chapter Leads Chinmay Dasmohapatra, Hemanth Varma Penmetsa, Sudhir Patro, and Vijay Garlapati spearheaded the effort. Volunteers Devansh Tadikamalla, Giri Kotagiri, â Gopala Abhimanyu Pullela, â Maurya Koppireddy, â Parichai Krishna Katterla, â Shiven Patro provided lot of help to make this event a grand success.
Food arrangements, registrations, and all the required coordination work to organize the event was taken care of by this team and got a huge applause from the audience for their efforts.
Unconditional support was received from SNUSA Executive Vice President Moorthy Rekapalli, Trustees Srini Reddy Vangimalla, Rajasekhar Reddy Aila, Sridhar Rao Julapally, Neelima Gaddamanugu, Sports Committee Chair Ramesh Babu Chaparala, MESU UNIT committee member Dr. Kishore Reddy Rasamallu.
We have raised significant funds from this event to support cataract surgeries for indigent blind patients in India.
Mobile Eye Surgical Unit (MESU) is a hospital on wheels and will cover an area in a 500 kilometers radius from Chennai, Hyderabad, and Jharkand. Each MESU consists of two buses. These buses go to remote villages and do surgeries in the field itself. One bus is used as a preparatory unit and the other bus is used as an operating theater. These buses are designed and developed by IIT Madras.
Bala Reddy Indurti and Moorthy Rekapalli explained how the MESU operations are currently going on in India and the future vision of expanding this service to entire India to reach the remote villages and serve poor patients, who can't afford to go to towns and cities.
Right now, 3 MESU Units are completely operational from Chennai, Jharkhand and Hyderabad to cover Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Jharkhand states.
The 4th unit will be starting in Puttaparthi in the beginning of January 2025 with the support of SNUSA and Board of Advisor Anand Dasari to cover the services in Karnataka and parts of Andhra Pradesh and Kerala.
Fifth MESU unit will be starting in Vizag in the 3rd quarter of 2025 with the support of SNUSA and Board of Advisor Udaya Bhaskar Ganti to cover coastal Andhra Pradesh districts and parts of Orissa towards Bhubaneswar.
Adopt-A-Village sponsors Srini Reddy Vangimalla, Rajasekhar Reddy Aila, Neelima Gaddamanugu, and Bala Indurti shared their experience about how these MESU 10 day eye camps restored vision of hundreds of patients in their native places and how gratifying that experience was.
Several people came forward and sponsored the MESU Adopt-A-Village program to restore the vision of indigent patients in and around their native place. Adopt-A-Village sponsorship is $12,500 for the places that are within 300 Kilometers of the base hospital and $15,000 for the places that are within 300 - 500 Kilometers.
Bala Indurti explained about the upcoming MESU projects, how much area they cover and how the Trustees and Volunteers are working tirelessly towards eradicating preventable blindness from India by doing fundraising events in different cities. Huge applause was received from the audience for the efforts of SNUSA towards restoring the vision for indigent patients.
Special thanks to SNUSA Core Team from Atlanta, who put countless hours into making this program a grand success.
Moorthy Rekapalli, Srini Reddy Vangimalla, Rajasekhar Reddy Aila, Sridhar Rao Julapally, Ramesh Chaparala, Neelima Gaddamanugu, and Rajesh Tadikamalla.
Thanks to Theagarajan and Deena Dayalan from Sankara Nethralaya India helped in designing flyers for this event.
Anupama Krishnan was the Masters of the Ceremony and did an excellent job in explaining about Sankara Nethralaya and the different emotions of Navarasam.
The Atlanta team is planning to organize a year end concert on Nov. 17th to raise funds to support thousands of cataract surgeries in India.
Vote of Thanks was given by Moorthy Rekapalli. Program was concluded with the national anthems of the USA and India.
Please visit www.SankaraNethralayaUSA.org
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