SSKNA

Convention dates: July 4th & 5th 2002
Location:Youngstown, Ohio, USA

Agenda for convention Day 1 : SSKNA Convention 2002 on July 4th
The SSKNA Convention meeting had commenced Saturday at 3 pm.
Venue Address:
Boardman Park Community Center
Youngstown, Ohio, United States

Agenda for convention Day 2: SSKNA Convention 2002 on July 5th
SSKNA Picnic @: Cape May County Park
All SSKNA families will get-together at 11:00 A.M. at Stitt Pavilion, Mill Creek park
Picnic Spot Address:
Stitt Pavilion, Mill Creek park
Youngstown, Ohio

The twelfth annual SSKNA convention was held at Youngstown, Ohio on July 04-05, 2002. It was hosted by Padmanand and Ritha Solanki family. We are very thankful for their great efforts in putting this very successful convention together. On the first day of the convention, the families assembled at Boardman Park Community Center at 3:00 pm. This years registration process was improved by registering members online at the registration desk. The members paid their membership dues ($30/family, $10/Student) and convention fees ($30 / Adult and Child over 5, and $10/Student). The Membership Information was updated online in real time and was immensely useful in making updates as the members came in.

This year, Raju Bankapur along with Sheel Walvekar will be taking the lead in maintaining the Samaj Membership List. The consolidation of various individual versions of the list have been completed, and only one copy is now being maintained.

Please provide updated Addresses, Phone Numbers, Email Address, Children Names, Ages, Spouses Name, Family Gotra to Raju Bankapur at bankapur@lucent.com.

Raju Bankapur thanked the Youth for volunteering and organizing the Registration Desk namely, Sheel Walvekar (Son of Shalini and Vijay Walvekar), Sonal Kalburgi and Sameer Kalburgi (Daughter and Son of Anu and Ashok Kalburgi).

Pooja was then performed for Amba Bhavani and Sahasra Arjun.

Very tasty snacks were provided in between the business meeting.

The business meeting started with welcome remarks and a speech by the SSKNA president, Mr. Vijay Walvekar. The speech was as follows:

Welcome to the 12th annual meeting of SSKNA. I am proud to say that this meeting or convention has the highest number of attendance, so far. It might be due to the excellent planning done by the Solanki's and I think we all knew that the Solanki's would do much better job in hosting the SSKNA meeting than the rest. If that's the case then we should let the Solanki's host every convention from now on.

Let us give them a big applause. I thank the Solanki's for taking great care in planning this year's meeting and showing lot of interest to ensure that we all are comfortable. They both have taken lot of time from their busy schedule to make sure that this function will be a great success.

And I thank you all for attending this year's meeting.

Rajusavji Bankapur, our treasurer and Mr. Nitin Barad our V.P. worked very hard to make sure that we all were well informed about this event. They both kept the discourse going, they answered many of our questions. They both sent us many emails that helped all of us to have a clear picture of this event. I want to thank both of them for their efforts in keeping us well informed of this event.

On the lighter note I would like to inform you that Atul Afre resigned from the secretary's position due to personal obligation. Atul's wife is pregnant. She has been advised by her doctor to take rest and Atul needs to be with his wife. He sends us his regards and hopes to see you all in the next SSKNA meeting.

Last year I briefly talked about enjoying every moment of our life, irrespective of our triumphs and tribulations. This time I would like to say that let our education, knowledge and facts guide our life. Sometimes we come across an individual who, in spite of being highly educated displays many gaps between his life and his education.

Some people take support of myths and superstitions to run their life. In today's advanced world, science and research has answered many questions and it has improved the quality of man's life all over the world. So let us put myths and superstitions away and let our education, knowledge, research and facts guide us to our future. With this remark I end my speech. Thank you all. (End of speech)

The SSKNA treasurer, Raju Bankapur presented the financial report. Raju Bankapur started his report by thanking all the members that have paid their membership dues. Usually it is only the members that attend the convention that pay the dues. We would like to request all the members to send their membership dues of $30/year/family to Raju Bankapur, 759 Sigmund Rd., Naperville, Il 60563. As you will see, there are expenses to run the SSKNA organization, and it is only fair to everyone that all members make a commitment to pay their yearly dues. Until now, this was loosely handled, assuming that members would send their checks in. Henceforth, the committee would like to track the list of paid and unpaid members. We do not want to eliminate a member for not paying, because we are a small community and wish to grow. We will not take adversary steps to curtail the growth of our membership. The committee would like to humbly request that all members pay their yearly dues. The moneys are used for developing programs for the samaj, and will not be utilized carelessly. Convention expenses are kept within limits of the collection received as convention fees.

The Table below shows the Balance sheet for 2001 - 2002.

2001 Convention Expenses

(Total Attendees Adults 64 Children 40) SUBTOTAL: 2870.02

Prizes (Ria, Samir) 40.00

Newsletter (sheel) 220.52

News Letter (Sonal) 76.53

WebHosting (Anil Dhondi) 300.00

WebDomain (Internic) 70.00

SUBTOTAL: 667.05


TOTAL: 3537.07

BEGINNING BALANCE (November 2001) 5334.00

NET COLLECTION 4402.00

NET EXPENSE 3537.07

CURRENT BALANCE (JULY 2002) 6198.93

NET INCREASE 864.93



End of Tresurer’s report.

Eleven lights were lit by Shaum Kabadi in front of Sahasrarjun painting reminding the tradition followed at one of the oldest existing temple of Sahasrarjun at Maheshwar. Lighting the lamps may be a new trend that may continue in all the future conventions creating Sahasrarjun spirit.

The visiting Guests from India were introduced. They were :

Mrs. Snehalata S. Walvekar and Mrs Mohini Pawar from Pune ( Mother & Sister of V.S Walvekar, Detroit)

Mr. & Mrs. Vaidya from (Parents of Srinivas Vaidya, Herndon, VA)

Mr. & Mrs. Chawla from (Parents of Nagesh Chawla of Canada)

Various discussion then took place at the business meeting.

Kabadi Balachandra presented an in-progress computer animated story of Sahasrarjun. It was shown on the computers to both adults and children attending the convention. Everyone enjoyed viewing and listening to the animated story. It is specifically designed for children borne outside Savaji belt. The animation showed had 19 movies each lasting 1-3 minutes. They are accessed by navigational buttons. The animation is accompanied by music and commentary by various SSKNA children, who recite the words.

This animated story of Sahasrarjun is an extension of the book –The illustrated story of Sahasrarjun. The manuscript for the book was presented at the Berling NJ Year 2000 SSKNA convention. However, it did not appear in the minutes then. The animated story will be released either as a CD or a DVD along with the book soon. The animation is prepared using the Macromedia Director 8 and flash 5 softwares. The illustrations were based on the style of Mahabharat and Ramayan story books.The Illustrated Sahasrarjun story book will be published in English, Hindi and possibly in Kannada. The Hindi translation was prepared by Shri Dineshkumar Arsid of California. The Kannada translation is in progress at Gadg Betgeri under the supervision of Shri V D Badi. It has 59 illustrations. The animated story was endorsed by the SSKNA ,

Balachandra Kabadi proposed that SSKNA members should sponsor on- one to one basis a college tuition and free book program to deserving graduating High School students of SSK community of India. Sponsorors name and the student they support will be listed in the SSKNA web site so that others will be encouraged to participate. This is geared for a post high school student based on the scholastic record. Choosing the candidate will be done by an International Sahasrarjun fund committee (ISF fund committee yet to be set up) .

Mahesh Jituri raise a question about the official process and avenues to announce the matrimonials by samaj members through SSKNA. It was regarding people sending pictures of marriage eligible men and women. What should we do with these pictures and information?

Since Anu Kalburgi had just visited India and was asked the similar questions by her family members she spoke: Currently we have no place to look for information on family backgrounds or the families with eligible boys and girls. People (USA and India) are interested in finding out the family status, and of the available eligible boys and girls who fall into category of ready for marriage. Her suggestion: Appoint a person as a point of contact. This person will provide the information may be by setting a private database (not on SSKNA website to start). Basically he/she will be a point of contact or facilitator for providing this information. All information about the family and the eligible person (boy or girl) interested in alliance should be forwarded to this contact person. The family providing the information will own full responsibility for all provided information. She is interested in volunteering her time to SSKNA to be the contact person to provide information may be for the east coast region. This discussion did not have a conclusion.

Anil Dhondi indicated that the matrimonial section on the official SSKNA website is behind a security screen which requires the user to enter a user id and password. He did this to avoid exposing the email addresses on that page from people stealing email addresses. Mahesh Jituri thought that the matrimonial section should not be behind a security screen, this defeats its purpose as people cannot have ready access. He believes that we have to put the burden on the member submitting the matrimonial to only include the information that he/she wants to be public in nature.

Other suggestion from Anu Kalburgi (after the fact) was that the SSKNA board post on our web page HELP wanted for volunteer SSKNA work related positions. Our Samaj member’s are talented, professional and skilled people who may want to volunteer time to help our community but are unaware of the available volunteering opportunities. Volunteered time to the Samaj can be used as an experience on their resume as we are a non-profit organization.

The SSKNA web site has grown into a large operation. It is widely used by the International SSK community. Thus far the Web Design and Management is carried out under the capable supervision of Anil Dhondi the web master .To develop it further and to be used by wider audience, it requires diversification. Balchandra Kabadi suggested the following: a supporting group consisting of two or more additional members should be formed, who jointly work with the current web master and the executive committee members. They can participate in a day to day decision making with the web master and provide additional technical support. The support group will work with the SSKNA executive committee members for major decisions. There was wide support on this suggestion. There are many personal as well as public web sites that have material covering SSK related matters. The user should have an easy access to these sites too. They should be linked with the SSKNA website. The supporting group may help in this matter. Any topic related to the explanation or description of matrimony, munj or any religious procedures ( Gotras etc) written by any SSK community member( from India, North America or any country) should be prioritized. To encourage wider participation, they should be listed under a new items category. The supporting committee may help here in guiding and decision making process. The various steps involved in our weddings and their meaning will be useful information for second or third generation children born overseas or in India outside the savaji belt. The spouses who will marry into our SSK community will benefit from this diversification.

Due to shortage of time, the business meeting was cut short. The topic of next years convention was discussed in a hurry, and not all views were taken into consideration. There were several discussions and feedback received that the location decided at the meeting was not a democratic or unanimous decision. For that, it was later decided by the committee that we would re think the decision of holding the next convention at Las Vegas. We will also consider putting up a survey on the web page to get feedback on this issue.

We would like to recognize Nirmala Miskin's contribution to the convention. She took care of the children while the business part of the convention was going on quietly and smoothly. The meeting was non-disruptive. She brought the kids back just in time for the dinner.

These discussions were followed by introductions of all attending members and their families. Soon after the picture session, a very delicious dinner was served at 7:00 pm, Talent show was held between 7:00 to 9:00 pm. Awards with Sahasra Arjun Logo picture (Arranged by Anjana Barad), were presented to several kids who participated.

The second day i.e. 5Th July: A three mile hike at Mill Creek Park was arranged by the hosts. Then a picnic at Stitt Pavilion, Mill Creek park around 11:00 am. All members enjoyed various events like Bingo, Dumb Charade, Cricket, and Soccer. Lunch was served to all members.

After the picnic, we headed to Solanki’s house. They were very gracious in their efforts to host a dinner and dance party in their beautiful home. A lot of kids and adults again performed some very nice dances. It was a fun filled evening. We would like to thank them for a most memorable convention. We would like to thank all members who attended and helped to make this convention a huge success. We all look forward to seeing you all at the next convention.

Sincerely,
The Executive Committee

Stay clued...Pictures coming soon