Dear supporters of Sevalaya USA,
The advent of COVID-19 has brought the issues of digital inclusion, food insecurity and personal safety to the forefront. Working with corporate sponsors, Sevalaya has distributed two crore rupees worth grocery kits, sanitation kits, dry rations kits, and masks to vulnerable populations and PPE kits frontline workers. These kits include rice, dhal, cereals, spices, oil, gloves, face masks, sanitizer, N95 masks, non-woven face masks and hand wash liquid.
Schools are closed for in-person learning in Tamil Nadu but the school year has started. Many of the students of Sevalaya do not have access to technology including smartphones, computers or laptops at home. Some parents have smartphones and teachers are able to connect with and teach their students using Skype and WhatsApp. The teachers have created WhatsApp groups for their classrooms and send worksheets on a daily basis to their students. Students complete the same and send them back to the teachers using WhatsApp. Students also send their audio recording, video recording and pictures of their drawings to their teachers. Sevalaya Chennai is requesting the donation of old Smartphones.
Sevalaya thanks alumni from the 1995 Computer Science batch of PSG College of Technology, Coimbatore for their generous and thoughtful donation. They celebrated their 25th year reunion by raising funds to support three Smart Classrooms at Mahakavi Bharathiyar Higher Secondary School. A Smart Classroom includes an ACER Dual Core PC, projector and an interactive board. The alumni group has also set up 4 educational endowments which will provide continuous support to Sevalaya.
Special thanks to InstaGana Live, a California based International community organization that promotes music, for hosting a musical fundraiser for Sevalaya on August 16. In this virtual event, participants from all over the world, including students and senior residents of Sevalaya, sang songs celebrating Indian Independence Day.
We are very excited to announce another ongoing fundraiser. 1995 ECE batch of PSG College of Technology, Coimbatore is celebrating their 25th year reunion by raising funds for Sevalaya.
Students at Sevalaya Mahakavi Bharathiyar Higher Secondary School secured 98% pass results in XII Std. Board Examination. 120 of the 123 students have successfully cleared the finals with excellent marks. Congratulations!
Since the beginning of 2020, Sevalaya USA has supported the education of 330 students and raised $1745 towards COVID relief and $3000 for supporting the senior homes. We would like to thank our donors and supporters.
One easy way to support Sevalaya is to shop on smile.amazon.com. It is the same Amazon you use and the products and services are the same. Go to https://smile.amazon.com/ and select Sevalaya USA from the charity list. Whenever you shop on smile.amazon.com, Amazon donates 0.5% of the price of your eligible AmazonSmile purchases to the charitable organization of your choice.
We are also looking for volunteers to join our team. For additional information, please visit us online at sevalaya.us and facebook.com/SevalayaUSA.
Be well and stay healthy!
Sincerely,
Sevalaya team