Love – the bridge between us and Him. Love – the only thing that He asks of us. Love – the only currency valid in the Divine exchange. A priceless, yet abundant item that flouts the laws of economics openly – the more the supply, the more is the demand. As the direct recipients of His love, we have the opportunity as well as responsibility to pay it forward through service. As we step into the momentous event of 90th year of the Advent of the Avatar, let us rededicate ourselves to His mission, express His LOVE IN ACTION through service…
Sri Sathya Sai Alumni Communication Team
An important and crucial part of organizing any activity is effective communication. Hence, a structured and organized body for alumni communication is the need of the hour. To address this need to offer efficient communication for various activities and offer to support to other groups, the Sri Sathya Sai Alumni Communication Team (SSSACT) has been set up. The initial activities consisted of collecting alumni coordinates (mobile numbers, e-mail IDs, etc.) and sending Sai activity mails to the Bangalore Sai Alumni. This database collection and coordination helped in forming a small group to attend Village Development Program – Sri Sathya Sai Village Integration Program (SSSVIP) at Bovipalya village, Bangalore.
Sai Premabandham 2010 was when the first global alumni database was shared and the number of global alumni collected was around 220. During the next Sai Premabandham, the database from Sai Students Portal was taken and the Premabandham program sheets were shared to more brothers ensuring a participation of around thousand Sai Alumni for the meet.
85th Birthday celebrations & Premabandham
The historic events of the 85th Birthday celebrations and the Premabandham program led to conducting Alumni meets in each region and the previous Premabandham databases were shared to all regions. For the first time the Sai alumni attendance to a regional alumni meet crossed 100. More such meetings resulted in finalizing weekly Sai alumni activity in Bangalore, and this model was replicated in Hyderabad. The last minute calls resulted in participation of around hundred alumni in manning the information kiosks for 85th Birthday celebrations. Last minute SMS and calls to Bangalore alumni resulted in 1400 alumni database (attendance strength of 700 in the morning touched 1400 by 4:00pm!) swelling to around 6000 family members for Sai Premabandham.
Post April 2012, sharing of Sai content commenced in social networking platforms. For the first time, regional groups to handle communication were made to ensure enough. In parallel, different activities taken up and participated by alumni were shared across various regions. The communication team strength crossed 30 and weekly and monthly mails to Sai alumni regarding information for various Sai activities were shared. A compendium ‘Alumni Pulse’ was created containing alumni activities with around 170 reports and more than 100 Sai alumni activities.
Vidyullekha Special Edition: The special edition of Vidyullekha was ably supported by the communication team. The regional teams circulated mails every week calls were made directly to alumni. With these efforts, around 88 articles from as many number of Sai students made it to the special edition. Like any initiative, the SSSACT has seen the invisible hand of the Lord in play as he remained the true Communicator and the team served as His mouthpiece.
A few achievements of the communication team are as follows:
- Special Edition Vidyullekha with around 88 Sai students’ articles
- Highest participation of 1400 Sai students in Sai Premabandham
- Every week a mail in Chennai and Bangalore (with more than 10 Sai Activities per week)
- 220 Sai alumni database has increased to over 5000 now
For more details, service opportunities and participation in the communication team, please contact Brother Satya Jnana Dutt at dutt.satya@gmail.com.
SAI North American Alumni Meet (NAAM) – October 2014
The 6th meet in the SAINAAM series was held in the tranquil campgrounds in Silver Spring, Maryland. A total of 52 alumni brothers spread across three decades, from various parts of the United States, Canada and Trinidad & Tobago attended the program.
The meet started at 6.00am with Omkaram, Astotharam and Suprabatham. The morning program started at 8.00am with Veda chanting and Bhajans. Brothers Sanjay Uchil and S. Kumar welcomed everyone to SAINAAM 2014. The objectives of this SAINAAM 2014 were to ‘Re-Collect, Re- Connect and Re-Live’ the days spent in the presence of Swami. The morning program was moderated by Brother Sai Latha Shankar.
A video compilation of Swami’s interactions with His students that followed brought back fond and heartfelt memories. Next, Brothers Murali Kotikalapoodi and Muriladhara Kaje provided a recap of SAINAAM, the North American alumni group and its significance. Following the video, Brothers Sai Nandan Gudipidi, Hari Sinniah and Amit Ahuja shared personal stories and touching moments of interaction with Bhagawan. An ice-breaker session was held moderated by Brother Praveen Makkena who regaled all participants with yesteryear stories and humour.
For this ‘then and now’ session, the meeting organizers had put together a slide set of photographs of every participant from their Parthi / Brindavan student days, and as each photograph was shown, the rest had to identify the individual. Once identified, each brother introduced himself, batch studied, current occupation and shared an interesting fact about himself. This session was so enjoyable that it brought a lot of laughter, memories and fond recollection of hostel- day life.
It was joyful for the participants to recollect those precious days and stories from the morning and evening Mandir sessions with Swami and to see how much Swami had impacted every student. The ‘reconnect’ session was instrumental in reminding all brothers of their shared past as students in Brindavan and Prasanthi Nilayam and how we all should remain connected and united with Swami in our hearts going forward.
The late morning session included three video conference calls with Dr. Narendranath Reddy (Chairman, Prasanthi Council), Dr. S Siva Sankara Sai (Associate Professor, Physics, SSSIHL, PSN) and Prof. Sudhir Bhaskar (Business School, SSSIHL, PSN). In the first call, Dr. Reddy shared stories of Swami’s divine presence in several overseas countries and exhorted Swami’s students to do their utmost to live and spread Swami’s messages.
Following this talk, the alumni were fortunate to be addressed from Parthi by Dr. Siva Sankar Sai, followed by a Q&A session. Siva Sankar Sai sir gave a heart touching account of his experiences with Swami as the Divine Mother and Father and urged the alumni to always think of Swami. He pointed out that daily student activities in the hostel continues to go on just as they did during Swami’s physical presence, a testament to the Divine guidance and omnipresence for His students.
The final video conference call was with Dr. Sudhir Bhaskar who talked about an initiative to focus on the ancient Bharatiya traditions and their relevance to business practices.
Following lunch organized by the Baltimore and Washington DC alumni and their families, the post lunch activities included a ‘learning and education’ session moderated by Brother Murali Kotikalapoodi. Updates on regional alumni initiatives and activities were presented to the group by brothers from Boston and Chicago. It was good to learn that our alumni brothers are actively engaged in weekly Sai Centre devotional, educational and service activities and also play an important role in annual regional retreat meetings. Regular alumni regional meetings were suggested to stay connected and work together.
The second hour of the afternoon session was moderated by Brother GV Ravishankar and focused on the theme ‘The Sai Organization and I’. Brother Ravishankar spoke on Swami’s message to students to be role models following their exit from the educational system at Prasanthi Nilayam or Brindavan and highlighted the convocation oath that we had taken. Discussions in this session revolved around how to encourage Sai alumni involvement in the Sai Organization that ultimately benefits the alumni’s spiritual development. It was encouraging to see that many of the brothers attending SAINAAM 2014 were actively involved in the Sai Organization activities.
The last hour was moderated by Dr. Siva Sai Ramana Kumar who led a session on ‘Who and How to Interface with the Alma Mater’. There was consensus and desire among the brothers to share their skill sets and talents with the present student body at SSSIHL. Some brothers shared examples such as teaching specialized topics / courses, helping in organizing international meetings, and in being research co-mentors. It was pointed that identifying a single point of contact at Prasanthi Nilayam would help the North American alumni to identify needs and coordinate alumni–institute interactions. Additionally, contact details of the brothers were collected along with their areas of interest in collaborating with the institute. This would serve as an initial database that would be expanded to cover all of the North American SSSIHL alumni.
After an eventful day, the evening program was opened to all the devotees of the local centres and the mid-Atlantic region. Around 300 devotees attended including officers from the region. The evening program was compered by Brother Abhimanyu Kaul. Brothers Ravi Mariwalla and Shashank Shah spoke about their personal journey with Swami. Several other alumni brothers, from batches spread across 30 years, shared short snippets of their experiences with the local audience.
This led to the grand finale where the alumni were treated to a mellifluous devotional music program. The music boys rendered songs that had been sung in front of Swami and transported the audience to the presence of Swami in Prasanthi Nilayam.
Overall the meet recharged the participants and reconnected them with Swami making SAINAAM 2014 a very memorable day to ‘Re-Collect, Re-Connect and Re-Live’.
Sai Students Portal Update
The Sai Students portal, blessed and inaugurated by Bhagavan, was launched in January 1, 2010. At any time 4-5 boys are manning this as a Seva. Apart from this, the portal hires support for maintenance and product development. A lot of effort is being made to make the portal more user friendly and easy to interact with. A major upgrade has been made recently with lots of exciting features specially tailored to increase alumni connectivity and easier communication among groups for Seva activities.
The new features include:
- Portal in Inbox: This is a means to access the portal from one’s email itself without logging into the portal. For any content received from the portal the words ‘Please type your reply above this line’ will appear at the very top of the mail. After hitting the reply button and pressing send from the email inbox, the response will go to all members subscribed to that conversation and will be posted simultaneously in the portal as well. This feature is expected to be live shortly. It is already in use by the 2010 students’ batch and the Bangalore alumni. It is possible to create city based groups too.
- Chat App: Like Whatsapp, this would be a chat application between a batch, a region or a global Seva initiative team. The app is native on Android/IOS. It can be seamlessly used across mobiles, iPads and computers with no limit to number of people in the group. The launch of this app is expected shortly.
- Events Calendar: This is similar to the events on Facebook, but with more functionality and control. Events for a city can be followed and options such as attending/not attending an event gives an idea for the event coordinator/creator to anticipate participation of alumni in advance and plan the activity accordingly. Discussion regarding the event can also be done leading to more focused discussion and plan the Seva more efficiently.
- Career Seva: There is a career module in the portal since its inception, but it is infrequently used. The current revamp wishes to make this module more user friendly and encourage increased interaction of features among members. The aim is to connect job seeking alumni with other alumni to facilitate job referrals and mentoring.
