Dear Friends of AASAI, I would like to take this opportunity to wish you all a very happy, safe and prosperous 2005. I hope and pray that none of your family and friends were affected by the calamitous events in South Asia.

AASAI's chairman, Mr. Raghavan, is currently in India and he will be analyzing the situation to determine the appropriate help that AASAI can provide towards the relief efforts. In addition to our chairman's visit to India we are also trying to establish a partnership with MS Swaminathan Research Foundation (MSSRF) to help the tsunami victims. You can visit MSSRF's tsunami activities at MSSRF Tsunami Activities.

AASAI has identified other organizations, in addition to MSSRF, that do grass root work among the various coastal communities that have been hit hard by this Tsunami. We will be updating our web site soon to inform you of our partner organizations that will be working with us to help the tsunami victims.

I am sure that you have been beseeched by many requests for donations to the various relief efforts that are currently underway in India and other countries. If there was ever a time of need for immediate help, this certainly qualifies as one.

I would urge you to consider making an early and/or additional donation to AASAI for the 2005 tax-year.

I sincerely appreciate the past support you have given to AASAI and I hope you would continue to do so in the forthcoming years as we try to help others so they can help themselves.

R. Muralidharan, Treasurer

AASAI initiated a new project to benefit street children, Deena Seva in Bangalore. The project pro-actively interacts with the Bangalore police to shelter abandoned children who would otherwise be in city jails. AASAI’s Dr. Gopinath recently visited Deena Seva Sangha (DSS) in Bangalore, to get first-hand information regarding the project. As you may be aware, DSS started in 1930 by a band of Gandhian workers, to provide education, health care, and rehabilitation of orphan and destitute children. They serve a population of 20,000 in various slums in Bangalore. Their programs include: 9 schools offering K-12 education, dispensaries, school for mentally retarded children, and vocational training centers. The City Police currently runs a program called “Sahayavani” to take children off the streets and hand them over to charitable organization for rehabilitation.

Nearly three years ago, AASAI’s Raghavan visited the Sri Ahobila Math Oriental High school at west Mambalam, Chennai. We saw in those bright young faces the future of our society. The school exudes a unique combination of the ancient charm of India with the reverberating voices of students reciting vedas and prabhandams and the clicking sound of modern-day computers. The simplicity of the school’s surroundings and the students stand out as if to proclaim to the whole world that a teacher’s dedication, student discipline, and insatiable desire for learning, are far more important than money and modern-day conveniences for success.

As if to reiterate this concept, many students of this school have achieved top state ranks again this year in the state wide public examination with students scoring marks of over 1170 out of 1200 (see side honor role of students). AASAI is proud to acknowledge the students’ achievements and for the third year in a row gave out total cash awards of approximately Rs. 20,000.

Thanks to your generosity, over 50 destitute elders with ailments needing services of others even for day-to-day life, are now able to lead life with dignity. As you are aware, AASAI has been supporting Sri Poorna Mahameru Trust, which runs a free home, Thriveni Illam, in Chennai. Through the dedicated services of several volunteers and tireless leadership of Sri. S. Swaminathan, the Trust has secured the support of local hospitals which provide free medical treatment to the elders. Also, the renowned Sankar Nethralaya eye hospital has adopted the Home for its ‘eye care’ program. With assistance provided by AASAI, the Trust has constructed Shanthi Niwas Complex in Pallavaram, Chennai. ShantiNiwas compliments the Thriveni Illam with 16 rooms for the use of Senior Citizens who pay for their stay.

This is generating revenue for the Trust, which is used to support, free of any charge, the 50 destitutes under the care of the Trust. A new medical ward with three beds has also been opened in January 2003, with two nurses on 24-hour duty. The services of a lady doctor are now available . The doctor visits the Home once a week and is also available for free consultation in her clinic in Pallavaram.

There are 170 million people with mental disabilities in the World. Taking care of them is in itself a big challenge. Many of us ignore them or learn to live with the problem. Only a few in our society believe that special-needs children could and should be integrated into the regular workforce or learning environment and enjoy independent (even if supervised) living. In the US, there is a keen sense of awareness and sensitivity to this segment of our population. There are abundant resources and organizations that are devoted to this issue. In fact, there is even a “Special Olympics” for these citizens.

Unfortunately, Indian society pays little attention to this segment of our population; it even attaches shame and stigma to this condition. Mostly, ignorance is the source of this problem. Thus, it is refreshing to see progress being made in this arena by the Little Angels school in Bombay. We have always been very skeptical about trying something new or different, but in this school, being different means being special.

Little Angels was founded in 2002 by a former flight attendant, Jahangir Afshari. The school’s primary focus is to meet the challenges posed to young children with multiple disabilities. Independence, confidence, and education are the main goals of the organization. Jehangir Afshari, a man of great inspiration to many, encourages the Indian society to accept and help these little angels to bloom. With his optimistic can-do personality, he has given these children an opportunity to be themselves and learn to find their own place in the world.

The students are first observed and tested to find out their actual difficulties. The children are then placed in any of three groups. Group “A” is a school-going program teaching these youngsters general education along with motor development and hand-eye coordination, to name a few activities. Group “B” is a pre-school course that stresses the development of reading and writing skills along with basic education and speech development. The last group, “Group C,” is a learning through fun course. Children are taught communication skills, pre-reading and writing skills, and tolerance. Occupational therapists, psychiatrists, and speech therapists help these students fight their problems on a daily basis. The education course is not by any means restricted to the classroom. Nature walks, weekly trips to parks, beaches, and swimming lessons are also part of their curriculum. In addition, the school has specially designed computer programs to help these students learn coordination, colors, and numbers.

Today, 40 children are learning and growing here; 75 more are on the waiting list. It's time to think bigger about this movement, to help change our attitude, to persuade people that individuals with mental disabilities can be contributing members of society. It has been a struggle for Jehangir and his team to come this far and the battle is far from over. Thanks to our friend Krishnan Swaminathan, who brought this project to our attention, AASAI plans to help the Little Angels, to renovate three additional rooms and a bathroom.

Let us all hold hands together and offer our support to these Little Angels.

There is one concept that is common in all religious faiths, the concept of Seva, or service. Hinduism is no exception to this concept. Seva is considered a part of human Dharma in Hindu thought. Pareshamupakarurtham Yajjivta sa jivati", He alone lives who lives for the sake of helping others, says the Rig Veda. Seva, therefore, is a significant aspect in one's spiritual life and advancement. This idea was also expressed beautifully by Swami Vivekananda who preached the worship of the poor when he said that serving man is serving God, “Nara Seva, Narayana Seva”.

Since time immemorial, our ancient rishis, sages, and great kings have demonstrated as living examples to the great importance attached to selflessness and loving service to others. In the Bhagwat Gita, Chapter 18, Verse 4, the Lord clearly speaks “yagno danam thapaschaiva pavanani manishanam,” sacrifice, gift, and austerity are sanctifying to the wise and should not be relinquished. The rishies and great kings did not limit their seva to the humans but extended the seva to all beings; be they human, mammals, birds, plants, or any other. This attitude of the wise clearly shows that seva promotes not only the joy of living in harmony with nature but rather is critical to everyone’s life since no one is independent. Our Hindu puranas contain many examples of this service ? There is a well known story of King Shib, who was prepared to cut out flesh from his own body and sacrifice himself in order to save a pigeon from an eagle. This thought is also exemplified in the story of King Ranti Deva contained in Bhagvatam.

When his subjects were facing a severe and devastating famine, King Ranti Deva fasted until all the hungry were fed. On the 48th day, when he was about to break his fast, he gave his water to a crying Pulkasa and all his food to a hungry guest. The king then said: "[I do not] care for my own salvation from the cycles of births and deaths. My only desire is to be present in all beings (to share their feelings) and undergo suffering with them and serve them so that they may become free from misery, hunger, thirst, fatigue, loss of strength in limbs, distress, grief, disappointment, delusion ? all these undesirable features of my distressed soul have all disappeared upon my giving water to one who was suffering from acute thirst." The king’s words set the standard for a true seva attitude. Mahatma Gandhi was quite impressed with the sayings of Ranti Deva. He adopted this quotation in all his Seva work. “Pandit Nehru echoed this feeling when he said “The ambition of the greatest man of our generation has been to wipe every tear from every eye.” Then how do we perform Seva? Our seers have said that Seva could be done in three ways ? Tan, Man, Dhan, namely physical, mental, and material support. Physical service is easy to understand. Mental service is to ponder about the sufferings of the poor, taking actions to alleviate them and motivating others to indulge in Seva. Material service is to give generously. Then the question is to what extent a person should give his time, efforts and wealth in charity. It is important to understand that one can choose any one of these three ways to help, the way that best suits one’s convenience and ability. At the present stage of one’s life, one may not be in a position to provide physical support.

It was February 15, 2003 Sports day at Sri Vidyasram ( yes that is the name of the scchool)..Wow! What an experience! What a difference between 7 am and 9 am! We could not believe ourselves! At 7 am we felt it was useless to spend our energy in starting a school with lofty ideals – when only 6 out of 72 parents turned up with their kids! But by 9 am - the number swelled to 500! The enthusiasm, the joy, and the sense of competition exhibited in the faces of those young ones, lifted our spirits and reinforced our conviction to this school project.

Being the first year, and having only about 50 children present, we encouraged other children of the village, parents of the school kids and others, to participate which they did! It was fun to watch the kids actively encouraging their parents during the events (like real pros)! In all, about 500 attended the Sports Day events ( more than half of them were not connected with school) which goes to show the awareness and involvement of the locals in our school activities. Let me go back to the beginning of this narration to explain why we got dejected about spending our energy! Previous day, we held a dress rehearsal to inform the parents to report at 7 am with their kids. Assuming it would take about 2 to 2-and-a-half hours for the events, we would have finished all events by 9:30 am before the day gets hot! For the children and others it would be a punishment rather than fun to be outdoors. This was the reason why we were very much depressed when the attendance was very poor even by 7:45 am on the Sports Day. When we wanted to set an example to be punctual it was so depressing not to be so ourselves!

Finally the events started by 8:30 am and as the attendance improved, - the tempo picked up! The mike and speakers started cooperating after initial startup hiccups! Wow! The Prayer, March Past, Drill, so on – one after another - with the last minute procured drum, cassette music- operating in full swing! Both Chandri and Maheswari (two experts in teaching very young children) had put in lots of efforts with the children and their teachers to come up with a good-show! Contribution from Renuka was not less! Starting from the simplest thing like preparing a placard, to beautify the venue of the Sports Events, her deft hands were continually busy! Naturally everything fell into place and the whole event went very well. The result was superb, giving us immense satisfaction!

Everyone helped. First Radhakrishnan, (manager), was the announcer in addition to organizing everything connected with the celebration, in our absence! The March Past was led by Ramesh, the one who transports us day-in and day-out, from Chennai to Aduthurai and back! Chandri, Maheswari, Renuka and the Teachers and the Ayahs were carrying the placards/leading the children in the March Past. (Poor Pre KG children! They could not keep pace with the LKG and UKG kids! The Drill by LKG and UKG students was a treat for the eyes! Hats-off to the Teachers who trained them. This was followed by Running Race, Lemon and Spoon race, Blocks Collection, etc. Some events were for juniors and seniors separately. Running Race for children and Sack Race for adults were conducted. It was such fun watching children persuading their shy parents to participate, and encouraging them during the event! By 10:30 it was time for distribution of prizes.