U. Srinivas Courtesy – Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U_Srinivas	Artist from Shree Maharishi Academy for the Blind (SMRAB)

While arrangements were being made with the artist, an opportunity arose to feature a troupe of visually handicapped dancers from the Shree Maharishi Academy for the Blind (SRMAB), located in Bangalore. This was a project that Asha for Education had supported in the past and the dance troupe had received acclaim around the world in earlier performances. Having heard rave reviews of the group from their earlier performances in the US, Asha DC jumped at the opportunity to bring them for Notes of Hope.

Hosting the Event:

When organizing events of this magnitude with international artists involved, we often coordinate the event with two or more Asha chapters in the US to facilitate distribution of travel and hosting costs. In this case we had the pleasure of co-hosting U Shrinivas, U Rajesh & SV Ramani with the Dallas-Texas, Stamford-Connecticut, and Phoenix-Arizona Asha chapters. The SRMAB (4 artists + 3 support staff), were also co-hosted by the Dallas and Phoenix chapters in addition to the Chicago chapter where they had already kicked off their tour with a performance on August 18th. For U Srinivas and troupe, Washington DC would be the opening performance.

Event planning took a significant amount of time as we had to coordinate dates with other chapters. In the end, Asha DC fixed September 15 as the date for the concert, with the venue once again being the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center at the University of Maryland-College Park. This venue had been the site for our prior performances with Ustad Amjad Ali Khan and Pt Shivkumar Sharma and boasted of excellent acoustics and a very professional staff.

Venue for NOH-2007 The Clarice Smith Center for Performing Arts - University of Maryland.College Park. Courtesy: http://www.flickr.com/photos/rethinkcollegepark/	The MCs for the evening introduce NOH

As the event date drew closer, we went through our last minute check of all the pre-event arrangements. Who would be picking the artists up from the airport? Were the hotel rooms booked? When the anticipated day arrived however, everything went like clockwork; the artists were eventually received at the airport by our volunteers Kirk Campbell, Sudipa Mustafi, Shuvo Mustafi and Druvit Bhrambhatt and transported to their respective accommodations, which for U Srinivas and troupe was the Hampton Inns and Suites in Herndon-Virginia, where their stay was sponsored by one of long time Asha volunteer Kirti Patel’s kin. SRMAB were hosted by volunteers Sudipa and Shuvo Mustafi at their own residence.

Having organized NOH multiple times by now, hosting the artists is something we have grown better at with each event. Yet every year brings a new and unique set of set of experiences and adventures for each of us involved in this event planning, be it in actively seeking out and approaching local businesses and people for sponsorship, managing the advertising and publicizing of the event, or coordinating it on a nationwide level. This year’s biggest challenge proved to be the latter, selecting dates for the various cities that were both suitable for the chapters involved as well as minimized overall travel.

Notes of Hope 2007	U Srinivas and troupe

With co-hosting chapters spread across the Midwest, Southwest, and the Northeast of the country, brokering a cost-effective and optimum plan of action proved to be a test of our planning and coordination skills, and one can never thank ones fellow volunteers and coordinators enough, as all of these activities demanded a lot of effort, time management, persistence and pure patience. Ideally we would like to have hosted the events back to back in proximal regions, but as luck would have it, we eventually ended up with exactly the opposite arrangement, and the artists flew from DC to Dallas, then back to Stamford and finally to Phoenix. While this made for some crazy zigzag travel, at least we were still able to keep the costs down, thanks to a lot of diligence on the part of the coordinators coupled with some creative ticketing!

Speaking of costs, events such as these would not be possible if it weren’t for the generous support we receive every year from local businesses and people, and we are truly indebted to them. This year we received support from Hampton Inns and Suites-Herndon-Virginia, who provided accommodation for the artists for multiple nights, Mango Grove restaurant in Columbia-Maryland provided some delicious meals, and TravelNet Inc of Rockville-Maryland helped with the flight arrangements for the artists. Numerous other supporters including individuals and small organizations like the APCA (Advancement and Promotion of Charitable Activities) helped offset the cost of the event brochures, flyers and other publicity material for the event.

Finally, when D-day arrived, our experience from previous years combined with the planning and coordination of our event team headed this year by Sudipa Mustafi and Namratha Rajagopalan came to our aid - the show started right on time (once again!) with a hall full of patrons and an introduction by the MCs for the evening Manju Krishnan and Mona Sehgal. Our biggest task was now over, from here on it was up to the artists to carry the show, and they did so beautifully.

The Show-NOH 2007:

Having kicked off the event with an introduction, U Srinivas and his troupe took the stage to the sound of applause and held the stage with many some well appreciated compositions, leading right up to the Asha DC presentation right before our half-time break. We traditionally use the time just prior to the interval to highlight one of our projects. This year, the event was designed to raise funds for Vidya Sagar, (see “Featured Project” link) a project in Chennai aiming to help with inclusion of children with disabilities into mainstream schools. Our presentation this year was show-cased as always in the form of a 5 minute slide show based on information we had received from them. It is our endeavor to maximize our fund-raising for projects and reach out to as many prospective donors as possible, and this year, as every other, we were successful in bringing the message of hope and education across. With this short, yet thought provoking presentation, we were able to raise a total of approximately 3000$ in donations for the Vidya Sagar project that evening, for which we sincerely thank all those generous audience members who helped make this possible.

Post interval, the audience was treated to a series of beautifully choreographed, dance performances-Pushpanjali, Deepanjali, Shakti, Tarangam and Tillana by the SRMAB. The fact that the dancers were visually handicapped made the intricate moves even more amazing and the audience responded with multiple ovations throughout the one hour. Post event festivities followed with dinner for the artists and volunteers hosted by one of the volunteers, as the artists and team members relaxed over casual conversation and food, we were happy to bask in a little bit of glory ourselves, having brought another NOH to successful completion.