Needed a volunteer to maintain SDSU Sanskriti Yahoo group.

Hello members,

I am Prakash Jha, and I have been moderating the Sanskriti yahoo group since 2009. It has been a while that Sanskriti has been an integral part of Indian community at San Diego State University.

Every university in US has some kind of student body group that represents Indian community and participates in the ongoing events to keeps alive the spirit in the community. Sanskriti participated in various events on campus and has proudly represented India. Sanskriti also conducted “Utsav” at a grand scale once every year along with “Diwali”, “Independence day” and many more events. These activities not only displayed the richness and diversity in Indian culture, but also provided a platform for members to nurture their talents and present it to fellow Indians in America. It also staged a strong platform for members to interact with each other.

Sanskriti has been a non-profit organization and always worked towards the benefit of its members. Every semester (at least 3 times a year), Sanskriti arranged for free airport pickups and free temporary accommodation to students coming to US for the first time. Sanskriti was the only student group that did all this free of cost, no one was forced to become a member or donate any money.

Arranging Airport pickups and temporary accommodations for new students was always a pain. It is hard to find volunteers who have car and can find time out of their job to go and pick up a student from airport, remember every pickup had a backup, i.e. two cars for each pickup. The task didn’t end here; we got in touch with the new student in India and forwarded them the contact details of volunteers so that they can call if no one arrives for a pickup. We also had to send reminders to these volunteers about their scheduled pickups and make sure that the new student gets a warm welcome on arrival. Once the student was picked up, we requested some volunteers to allow these new students to live with them till they find something of their own. At the end of day, these new students knew couple of senior students around and I am sure it gives a sense of safety to the students as well as to their parents. I would also like to thank all the volunteers and I am sure your help will be remembered at least by the affected students.

I would like to steal the opportunity and thank all the members and event participants in past for adding value to Sanskriti by your valuable contributions. University requires that all committee members to be full time students. Just imagine the determination of these committee members, they excelled in studies and at the same time spend time organizing events and making things happen. Guys it is not easy to conduct events on campus, I am sure many of us don’t even know how to book Montezumma hall. I would also like to thank students who practiced day and night for events in return of nothing but the proud feeling of representing India and every Indian on campus.

Last but not the least; I would like to thank Prof. Gangaram for his precious and timely guidance which helped us to keep Sanskriti on track and within university rules. He nurtured Sanskriti to its glorious reputation, and he has gone beyond his limits to preserve the pride of Sanskriti.

Unfortunately, Sanskriti got un-recognized from San Diego State University in 2009 and has been nonfunctional since then. Looking at the amount of postings on Sanskriti Yahoo group, I realized that people still need something like Sanskriti or at least they need Sanskriti yahoo group, hence I kept moderating mails. Now I have realized that there are many new students in

SDSU and I don’t know them all, hence it becomes hard to determine if an e-mail is from a student or someone else.

I have hence decided to extend the responsibility of maintaining Sanskriti yahoo group account to an eligible student who will be living amongst students so that the emails can be managed in a better way. Remember; just don’t volunteer out of excitement because it’s a task of owning a responsibility. Doing things for yourself and your loved one is easy, everyone does it, the real value is to do something for needy no matter if it’s a stranger. The help need not be a big favor but even small things count, like forwarding e-mails to the community when someone is desperately looking for a roommate.

If you believe that you can handle the responsibility of being a moderator of a group with more than 1500 members, just write couple of lines about why you feel so and send it to me on my gmail address. Don’t forget to mention about yourself, your contact detail (email/phone), your reason for being at SDSU and how long you’ll be a student.

Regards,

Prakash Jha