Dear Friends!  We are glad to get back with another e-Anjali ..

First of all, please mark your calendar - KHNA is happy to announce Samgamam 2008, a two-day festival for the families, youth and children with fun-filled competitions, panels and invited programs in sunny Southern California, May 24-25 (Memorial day weekend). More below!

More urgently, KHNA needs the community's help in the Annual scholarship program for poor Kerala students' higher education. KHNA had granted 49 scholarships last year and are determined to provide much more scholarships in future years. Please see the appeal for help. More below in the editorial.

The Vishu issue of Anjali on its way: This is a last call for materials to go into our Anjali quarterly print magazine, due out by Vishu in April. There is still time for you to send articles, announcements, photographs and other material for the magazine. The Anjali reaches over 2000 friends around the continent and overseas by regular mail. Please browse the beautiful past issues. If you wish to submit any items, please click on the Anjali submissions page and send it soon.

Another item with a deadline soon (Mar 31st) - Is there an artist or two among you or the youth you know, interested in designing a nice Aashamsakkurippu for Vishu? Here is an e-Card competition. Your reward? .. Well, your card will be emailed to everyody we know in the continent and you will be famous!! (OK, we have an ulterior motive too: We want to know the artists among you, just in case we need some help later from some talented ones from the community! :) )

Guruvayoorappan in Canada? -- Here is something that you may want to contribute to. KHNA would like to bring your attention to Brampton (near Toronto, Canada) where the ardent bhaktas are building a Guruvayoorappan temple. The temple is currently in a temporary building, and work is fully underway to build a permanent temple. The $5 million project requires a loan and they need individual loan pledges to convince a bank to forward a loan (note that they are not requesting funds from you now!). We hope that some in our KHNA community will help out. See our article for details and to reach their website. On that topic, we would like to also inform you of the ongoing efforts on fundraising for temples by the Kerala Hindu Society, Dallas (link), and the Geethamandalam, Chicago (link), two host organizations of past KHNA conventions.

KHNA scholarship program - Why do we do this?:   For a very simple reason. It is fast becoming impossible for many Hindu kids with no access to support from any religious institutions and agencies as in other communities, to get an education beyond high school. What was a tuition fee of Rs. 1000 two decades back, is Rs.40,000 now, after the proliferation of professional and private institutions. The poor students in the Hindu community have few people to approach for help except their own community around world. We know that the political and other forces rarely allow Hindu temples' funds to be used for financial support of poor hindus! If we do not support this cause, who else will? We are not making any Hindu fundamentalist argument here; just plain economics. We must take care of our own, and focus on doing our job, because all the talk and blame-game will not amount to a hill of beans in the end, to our kids.

We have no doubt that many of you want to help and you will agree that it is relatively painless for most families here to come up with one scholarship of $250. We also understand your usual worries about where your money will go, whether it will go to deserving students, and about who takes credit. All we can say is that you have to trust us - in fact, why don't you get involved dirctly with us, and ask us all the details? KHNA will let you know all the details very transparently, and the guarantee from the KHNA scholarship committee is that not a penny will go for anything but directly to support the students. No administrative costs, nothing!

KHNA was so gratified to see the spontaneous outpouring of your support to the call for funds to help the two young kids of a worker (Sasidharan Pillai from Muthukulam) who passed away unexpectedly in the US in November. With hardly a phone call or any pressure from any of us, the good hearts among you sent in checks worth $15,000 (see the news and donor list ). Let us continue the momentum. By our estimate, there are at least 25,000 Hindu Malayali families in the US alone (We will write later about how we estimated that, as it is interesting by itself). Of those 25000, less than 100 donors were enough to come up with the above fund. We now need just 400 of the remaining 24,900 families to pick up one poor student each in Kerala! Can we do this?

The education situation in Kerala is dire, and we must act. We have published the details of the 350 applicants in the hope that you would find it in your heart to support a kid. In fact, we encourage your direct participation and your getting in touch with the student you support. KHNA will also attempt to help you find a qualified poor student from near your place in Kerala. Here is a suggestion for an easy way to do it - Simply call your good friends, go to a restaurant or organize a home bhajan, and discuss forming your own small group that raises 3 or 4 scholarships for some students that you can select from the list. You can print the list from the website link and take it with you to get your friends to circle some names. The donations sent through KHNA will of course be tax-deductible. Our community and the poor kids in Kerala will deeply appreciate your help. Hope you will come through. Please see the KHNA Scholarship Program web site for all details and to get in touch with the scholarship committee. Thank You!