Dear supporters of Sevalaya USA,
Happy New Year! The year 2020 will be remembered for the challenges created by the pandemic which have been felt deeply worldwide. Through this incredible adversity, the strength and resiliency shown by Sevalaya supporters is greatly appreciated.
In 2020, Sevalaya supported 543 students at the Mahakavi Bharathiyar High School. Some of the activities made possible by your support include two
fundraisers to help Sevalaya students get access to technology during the COVID lockdown of schools and two alumni fundraisers that helped set up endowments and smart classrooms. In addition, Sevalaya USA donated items like Ensure, whole wheat pasta, canned vegetables, fruits and sauces, crackers, Brown rice, granola bars, peanut butter, canned salmon and tuna, nuts, cereals, pancake mix, etc. to the Community Services Agency in Mountain View.
We thank the alumni from the 1995 ECE batch of PSG College of Technology, Coimbatore for their generous and thoughtful donation. They celebrated their 25th year reunion by raising funds to support one Smart Classroom (a Smart Classroom includes an ACER Dual Core PC, projector and an interactive board) at the Mahakavi Bharathiyar Higher Secondary School. The alumni group has also set up the following endowments which will provide continuous support to Sevalaya.
Educational Sponsorship for 3 children
Living expenses for 2 children
Sponsorship of dinner once a year
Living expenses for a senior
In 2020, some of the funds came through fundraisers hosted by Sevalaya supporters. Our thanks to Sundar Vaidyanathan, Sundar Ramanathan and Prema Ranganthan for their Facebook fundraisers. We are grateful to Preethi Srinivas of Google for hosting a fundraiser to raise money to buy Chromebooks and smartphones for the students who do not have access to technology at home. Schools have been closed for almost a year due to Covid-19 and this donation helps students with their distance learning. We would also like to thank her for initiating the revamp of our website.
We appreciate our donor and supporter, Mr. Kathiravan Ezhilmannan, (Prabakar Sundarrajan) who presided online as the chief guest at the Pongal Celebrations at Sevalaya India on January 13, 2021 and gave a humorous and inspiring speech to the students.
Sevalaya USA board members attended the Pongal celebrations virtually and observed the cultural program performed by the students of Sevalaya.
We need your support to continue our work. 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.
Sincerely, Sevalaya team