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ISW India Day Weekend Extravaganza
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August 7th - 9th, 2020
ISW will be hosting a Virtual India Day Event spread over three days from August 7th to 9th at various times. More details of this multi day entertainment extravaganza is coming soon.
Check the website
for updates. Our theme this year is - Navarasa (the nine emotions). The program will run virtually with each day bringing segments of the program with music, dance, songs, and more. If you want to participate in our cultural event please fill out
this form
.
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It is always exciting to see steel finally going up on a construction site. Join us for a bird’s eye view of how the steel skeleton for the new extension went up (video courtesy Raunit Kohli). We hope to bring you regular updates on the construction progress both here in eSandesh as well as
on the website
.
As the building nears completion, it becomes even more important to ramp up fundraising to close the final gap. We hope you can continue
supporting this effort
in any way you can. Revisit
this site
often to keep up with the construction.
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ISW Ganesh Idol Workshop
August 15th
and 16th, 2020
We are planning to hold this year's Ganesh Idol Workshop virtually. The workshop will be held over a period of two days, August 15 and 16, 2020. The first day is for making the idol from clay and the second day is for painting the idol after it has dried. All the material required will be provided and local participants can collect their material from ISW SGM volunteers in advance. Remote participants will be provided a list to order. Click
here to register
!
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ISW Savers Fundrive
August 8, 2020 at noon
Save the date Aug 8th 12 pm (noon) For the ISW Savers Fundraiser! Clean your closets and donate your surplus clothes, shoes, housewares, and other household items to Savers and raise funds for the ISW India Center expansion. Contact
Sharat Amin
for more info.
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ISW Paint Night
ISW Paint Night was a great success! We had around 15 attendees at the zoom session, and over 1000 viewers on our Facebook live! Special thanks to Avni Gala Chheda for such an interactive session. If you missed it and would like to try creating your very own art, click
here to watch the video
!
Check out some of the beautiful paintings created:
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Above: Hingorani Family
Below: Pradnya Cowlagi
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SAYAA, South Asian Youth Activists and Allies Initiative
by the new ISW Young Professionals group
We are excited to announce a new ISW group to reach out to young professionals of South Asian descent.
The first activity is committed to social justice and racial equity initiatives in the South Asian community.
SAYAA or "South Asian Youth Activists and Allies" is sending out a survey to gauge the interest in pursuing this endeavour.
Click here
to take it. SAAYA also plans to host an online discussion about these issues.
The group - through dialogues, education, disseminating of resources, and engaging with peers and the wider South Asian community - hopes to advance the mission of organizing social justice activism, standing in solidarity with Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) peers and self-reflecting on the community’s role in perpetuating injustice within the South Asian community.
The group is very interested in working with individuals ages 14-35. If one is outside this age range but would like to provide opinions/suggestions, one can still access the shared knowledge and resources. Please forward the survey to young professionals you might know. For any additional questions or information, please email:
SAAYA Committee: Shubh Agrawal, Danush Chelladurai, Tanvi Jain, Aditya Khanna, Kavya Raghunathan, Aarshiya Sachdeva
Advisors: Raj & Shiamin Melville
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ISW CULTURAL & LANGUAGE SCHOOL NEWS
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Our registration for September 2020 is now open! Register at:
In-person classes will start later based on the Shrewsbury School Guidelines, and our building expansion completion.
Online Open House on September 20th, 2020 attended by parents, teachers and students. Online School starts on September 26th, 2020 attended by teachers and students.
The ISW Cultural and Language School was established in 1992. We believe that ‘a language binds a culture’ and we have a home base for our children who are the future of the Indian Community. The school meets every Saturday & Sunday morning from September to May We currently have 17 classes in 5 different languages (Hindi, Marathi, Gujarati,Tamil, Telugu) for all age groups, including Hindi for adults.
Click here for info
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Cultural and Language School Summer Classes
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SW Masti Online Summer is well underway with over 120 kids signed up for 9 different sessions. Thanks to the many volunteer student teachers we were able to teach subjects ranging from Math, Hindi, Python, Games, Origami, and Indian Cooking. We asked a couple of our student teachers to share their experiences.
"My name is Mohini Gera, and I attend Shrewsbury High School, and I'm in 10th grade. I volunteered to help with the new ISW MASTI online classes this Summer. I have learnt a lot from these kids, although they are younger than me. They taught me how to work through a technical difficulty and I was able to help them when they were stuck. They were also very easy and fun to work with. This online class will be a memorable event in my life and I really enjoyed it. We had fun doing games on Kahoot like multiplication, brain teasers and a math knowledge check. I had so much fun working with these kids. I will always remember this and look forward to working with them again!"
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"My name is Tanvi Gahlot and I attend Westborough High School, and I'm in 9th grade.
Over the summer ISW hosted an online program for kids. The first part of the program was a more fun approach with crafts and games. The second part was educational, I was one of the student teachers who taught Hindi to younger kids. I really enjoyed teaching the kids. Along with the kids I also learned a lot while I was making the class lessons and working to make my class fun. The online program both helped keep the kids busy and teach the volunteers how to manage a class. Overall, ISW's summer classes were a great summer program for me, I would just like to say thanks to Ruchi aunty and Shiamin aunty for the amazing opportunity."
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The Temple Monkey
by Pravin Trivedi
Pravin Trivedi, an active ISW and IA of Springfield member, shares another humorous story of when a mischievous monkey that steals a policeman’s handcuffs!
Read his article
on our website!
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ISW Community Members Virtual Offerings
Several community members are offering a range of virtual activities to keep you and your family engaged. Latest additions include online Vedic math, which is a collection of techniques or sutras to solve mathematical problems in a fast and easy way. See the complete list of activities and contact info at the at the
ISW website
.
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YOUR PROFESSIONAL SELF
We continue with our series in “
Your Professional Self
with another interview with a young professional couple launching a YouTube Channel. To contribute to this section please contact us:
ProfessionalSelf@iswonline.org
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Interview with the creator of FunIndians
By Ragoo Raghunathan
Smiti and Abhinit are new residents to Shrewsbury, MA. During these COVID times, they have focused their energy on creating an alternative channel of entertainment and communication for themselves and their family back in India. I caught up with them to get a glimpse into their journey:
Q: I know you recently started up a YouTube channel called Fun Indians, and you are having fun doing it. Over the past few months you have gained over 300 subscribers. We think that there may be other people in the community who might want to do similar things during these COVID times. Would you mind sharing some of your thoughts and experiences with us? For people who don’t know you, please tell us who you are and a little about yourself, when did you come to Shrewsbury?
I am Smiti Nagar. I married Abhinit in January 2019 and came to Albany, NY where my husband was a Ph.D. student. We moved to Shrewsbury in November 2019 when he got a post-doc offer at UMass Medical School. I’ve pursued an MBA (HR) in India and am currently on a F2 visa. As my visa’s restrictions prevent me from working in the US, I’m currently a homemaker.
Read the rest of their story about how they started their very own YouTube Channel
on our website!
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Contact Information
India Society of Worcester
Mailing Address:
PO Box 136, Shrewsbury, MA 01545
Answering Machine:
508-842-9795
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