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)

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.

As a leader of Sangam India, my call to you is to help us keep our activities and our planning and development side going. It is important that while giving as much as we can give to rebuilding this community, we do not let this circumstance sidetrack us from continuing our work, which will empower us to best help the Ramavaram community. For this to happen, we all need to come together.

Sangam India boasts over 300 members worldwide, and right now is the time for those 300 members to come together to help our friends. Here are some ways you can immediately help:

1. We need funds. If you are interested in sending money from outside India, please contact Sujan Pakala at sujan.pakala@gmail.com. He will be handling all donations. Within India, please contact Navya at nchundu@gmail.com. If you have any ideas for fundraising, please run those by Navya as well.
2. We have clothing coming from the US on July 20, but in the meantime we need to run an emergency clothing drive so we can supply each family with at least one more set of clothes from what the government has given. They have not provided children’s clothes, leaving the children with only undergarments. If you are within India, please gather together usable clothes. You can contact Jaba at 91 9940661886.
3. We need our legal team to be fully functional. For us to be able to help these families to the best of our ability, we need to increase our legal standing. We really need people to donate some time to this. If you are a lawyer, or know a lawyer, or are willing to help work through some paperwork, please contact Navyatha at navyatha.mohan@gmail.com.
4. We need you to spread the word. Please tell everyone. Use every modality you have – Facebook, email, instant messenger, SMS, phone calls – to inform your friends of our needs. If you have any PR questions, please contact Priyanka at priyanka.boghani@sangamindia.org.

As we find out more about the needs, we will be posting updates. Please keep a close watch on the blog for more information coming soon, most likely in the next 6 hours.

Thank you for your solidarity in our time of need.

We now have a profile on idealist.org, a website started by the NGO Action Without Borders, which “connects people, organizations, and resources to help build a world where all people can live free and dignified lives.”

Various NGOs from around the world put up profiles on this site, along with their events, promotional materials, campaigns, and activities. They put in jobs and volunteer opportunities and find other NGOs with similar projects to collaborate with.

Its a great idea and it has a lot of potential to enhance the activities of all these groups through the power of the internet.

Take a minute to check out our idealist.org profile. We hope that we’ll be able to work with other groups and find more help through this excellent resource.

Visit our idealist.org profile

The Facebook group has been started several months ago and has grown to over two hundred and fifty members. The Orkut community was just started last month and is just beginning to grow. Considering that several of our members discovered us through Facebook, we feel like it has been a success.

If you are a member of either Facebook or Orkut, please take a minute to join! Not only is it a great way to show your support, but we hope to make these sites into communities where people can have active discussions. In addition, we’ll try to keep them up to date with events that are scheduled and in ways that people can get involved.

Join the Facebook Group

Join the Orkut Community

Thanks for joining! Don’t forget to invite your friends.

NOTE: for the Orkut link above to work, you have to already be logged in with Orkut. If you have any difficulty, just log into Orkut and search for “Sangam India” (in quotes) and our group should be the first to come up. Look for the icon of the smiling child and you’ll know its the right group.

சங்கம் இந்தியா தமிழ் சிற்றேடு (.pdf)
Sangam India English Flyer (.pdf)

With this, we hope to have more success in getting our message across to a broader base.

As usual, please feel free to print it and share it with people you know!

Thanks to Ms. Uma for her translation, and thanks as well to our proofreaders, Ramachandran Ramgopal, Apoorvaa, and Pamela for helping her with this task!

The flyer is currently designed for A4 sized paper.
Aslesha’s flyer, which has a lot more information, is going to be made into a brochure. Stay tuned for an update!

SangamFlyer.pdf (1.1MB)