The North America Telugu Society (NATS) organized their first balala sambaralu in Memphis at Cordova Center on Dec 17, 2011. As you all know, NATS celebrated PunditNehru Jayanti by organizing Balala Sambaralu in November across major cities in USA. These mega sambaralu were organized as part of NATS core mission ofcommunity service focusing on children.
“Children are the world’smost valuable resource and its best hope for the future” . Despite being the busy holiday season, close to 200 peopleattended the Balala Sambaralu with great gusto making it a splendid success. Childrenfrom all over the greater Memphis area between the ages of 6 to 13 activelyparticipated in various competitions including Math, Chess, Geography, Drawing& Essay writing. Some kids who came to participate in just one competition,after coming to the event got motivated & participated in all. The 6 hourlong sambaralu concluded with Chess finals and prize distribution.
All the kids and parents truly appreciated the thoughtfulnessof the NATS team for coming up with this unique event. They also noted how calm& relaxing the event was even though it was a competition. The childrenwere thrilled with iPod Shuffles & MP3 players given as prizes. They said this was the first ever time an organization made them so joyful by encouraging& recognizing their talent.
The organizing team includes Srini Rallabandi, MuralidharReddivari, Sreeni Meka, Raghu Guttikonda, Jafar Mirza, Kiran Kodali,Jayaprakash Kotha, Naveen Mamidipalli, Ravi Dasari, Kishore Tirumalasetty,Narendra Gadde, Kanth Nallabantu, Gouri Shankar Sasipalli, MahendraJosyabhatla, Sanjeev Kanneganti, Muralidhar Manikonda, Srini Posinasetty ,Nagendra Srinivas Kodali & several other volunteers. The event was cohosted by Telugu Association of Memphis (TAM).
NATS Memphis team is very pleased & encouraged with thecommunity’s response and participation. They thanked all the participants, parents& volunteers and vowed to make it even better next time.
