Just a reminder! We are on twitter, and we tweet regularly about relevant issues such as urban poverty, global health issues, development initiatives and microfinance.

Follow us here!

It has been a long year. A little over a year, in fact. Sangam has been under the radar – off the map, even – for a while now, and we, like you, have been wondering what was going to happen next.

Sangam India is a group that rose from the roots up – from a group of friends with a dream to an organization achieving real goals. We connected with other organizations, we made new friends, we succeeded at some things and we failed at others. But most importantly, we learned. And we still believe in our cause.

After our break, we are restarting Sangam from the ground up. We will be completely retooling and restructuring our structure and our methods to provide a better basis for our future projects. As usual, for such an overhaul of an existing program, we will need manpower, ideas, creativity and most importantly, passion.

Please stay tuned for regular updates, and as always, let us know if you can help.

Happy Independence Day! On this day, sixty-two years ago, India was formed into a sovereign nation.

We look forward to a day when all Indians can live with the dignity that is their birthright and we hope that we can all work together to make this dream happen.

Attached are the summaries of Committees involved in Sangam India that are in need of volunteers. These summaries were made by Katie Bush and were based on the content from our Initiatives section. These were introduced during the last General Body Meeting.

In addition to the ones summarized below, volunteers are also needed for the following committees:

• Event Planning
• Public Relations/Advertising
• Fundraising

Check out the summaries that have been written here (.pdf)

1. Our organization and its purpose, as well as an introduction to the board members.
2. Registration forms were filled out. If you would like you fill out a registration form, we invite you to do so.  You can visit http://sangamindia.org/registration and fill out a form on the internet.
3. Our committees were introduced
4. Past projects – we briefed our members on events that happened since the last meeting in January including the projects that we had undertaken and the fire that occurred in the Ramavaram slum in June.
5. Setup of the organization – explaining the working of abroad teams and local teams to work on various projects
6. Future plans in the MGR Nagar slum
7. Asked for input - most of the input regarded how we can expand our member base and get more youth involved from other colleges.

In order to synchronize the abroad team’s planning and the Chennai team’s action and implementation, the information will be streamlined and funneled through the US public relations coordinator.  It is more efficient to have one point of contact so we will have one person in charge of passing on information from abroad to India.  As the process is put into action, we will work out the kinks in the system.  The abroad team will be using a wiki to share information and collaborate across country lines.  Please feel free to send us queries and suggestions.

A feature we worked on for the new site was Sangam India – Around the World. We thought of this idea as a way to show potential volunteers (like you, we hope!) what people are doing around the world to aid in our cause.  Over the last few months, people have been involved in developing promotional materials, skits, educational curriculae, and sanitation and development research work.  Volunteers have stepped forward from places like Australia, the UAE, England, and the United States.  Their immense contribution helps us do our job in the most efficient and educated manner.

We hope this map will demonstrate to that regardless of where you live in the world, we’d love to have you involved in our project, and we could certainly use your help in our group.

Thanks to our numerous volunteers from different cities in India as well as around the planet; and we depend on you to run our projects!

Check out: Sangam India – Around the World.

After almost three months in the making, we are excited to announce the launch of our new website today! Thanks so much to everyone who has been involved. The suggestion of making a new website began about 7 months ago, when Tina Ye, a designer from Boston, MA suggested to make a new site and volunteered to be the one to do it. What emerged from that idea is this website and we hope you all will enjoy it. An immense thanks goes to Tina for her tireless work, long nights, and patient responses to emails for many weeks.

The new website is more than a redesign however. We took this opportunity to write out completely new content for the website, which can be seen under the about and the initiatives sections. This was also a large task that involved many, many people:

Our Logo – written by Tina Ye, who also made us a new logo.
Mission Statement – written by Sriram Ramgopal, Nivedita Gunturi, and Navyatha Mohan.
Our History – written by Priyanka Boghani
Our Model – written by Gautam Bagga
Board Members – written by the board
Initiatives at a Glance – written by Apta Errabelli
Initiatives: Healthcare and Nutrition – written by Sriram Ramgopal
Initiatives: Education and Mentoring - by Rifa Khan, Priyanka Boghani, and Sriram Ramgopal
Initiatives: Hygiene and Sanitation – by Katie Bush
Initiatives: Women’s Issues - by Nivedita Gunturi
Ways to Help – by Priyanka Boghan

In addition, thanks to Adrienne Nobbe for meticulously editing the website for mistakes.

You will also see a new section called Join the Movement – which is about bringing the Sangam message to your city, and how to make a difference in your communities, today.

We hope you all enjoy the new website and please visit often – as you know we work hard to keep the site as up to date as possible. Of course, we’d appreciate your feedback!

There has been a lot that has happened over the last week:

1. The visit to the MGR Nagar Slum on Saturday, which was a success. We’ll share more about that in a post later today.
2. The new website, which is in its final stages and should be coming out this weekend.
3. The survey, which is set to go this Saturday, at 5:00 PM.

We’ll need volunteers for the survey, so if you can come, please do contact us!

More about these three will be shared in upcoming posts.

Once again, we’re very sorry for the downtime and stay tuned for more updates.

The Sangam India logo seeks to embody the goals, beliefs, and hope of the Sangam spirit. We have adopted for the heart of our logo a classic symbol of transcendence: the lotus flower. Born into darkness and muck, the lotus eventually emerges high above its watery roots to bloom into a lovely flower. This symbolizes the core of our work, in which we assist and encourage those who are disadvantaged in courageously transcending their circumstances to achieve dignity, independence, and equity. The colors of the lotus petals also carry meaning for us: the red signals determination, strength, and vigor, while the light brown symbolizes the dirt of day-to-day challenges and hardships faced by many. At their intersection is a vibrant green, representing vitality and growth. This expresses our belief that when great determination is combined with firsthand experience of hardship, tremendous growth can happen. Finally, for the Sangam India typeface, we have chosen Archer, designed by Hoefler and Frere-Jones, for its welcomingly open forms and bold yet graceful feel.

-Tina Ye