May 2019 – Newsletter
After celebrating notable accomplishments of our dedicated volunteers last month, we sprang into action with the same vigor as always to serve our community and make a difference!
Please Note: From April 2019 onward, please start entering your volunteering hours in the following google form. Because of some policy changes at PVSA, we no longer need to log in hours into the PVSA account. E&E will take care of that part:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/14aCCBe74pU2ZQP2gdxXMGD3m0-8tKklzazClDQaB2rA/edit
To all 2019 graduates: Enjoy your graduation day, we are so proud of you. Congratulations for your achievements. And E&E is wishing you all the success and happiness the world has to offer.
by: Tanisha Tol
Here is a snapshot of our May 2019 activities: As a team we gave total 325 hours to the community in May month.
Serving Our Community
- Sunday Friends: We play games, read and draw with children from low income communities. We also cook and serve meals and cleanup afterwards
- Cook and Serve, Family Supportive Housing (FSH), San Jose, CA: Every 2nd Sunday of the month we cook and serve at FSH whenever an E&E family sponsors the meals. For $350 you can feed around 50 – 60 people. This month, we thank XXX for your generous contribution
- City Team Shelter: We help with all kitchen work including food preparation, pantry organization, cleanup etc.
- Meal Sponsorship to HELP-AshaSadan: Thank you very much Sunitha Anumolu, Subash J, Laxmi Cherabuddi, Vasu Madhav for sponsoring meals during May 2019. Your generous donations helped to provide nutritious food to children rescued from human trafficking, prostitution, sexual slavery, forced drug taking and violence. If you are interested in sponsoring a meal, you can signup at:
https://www.signupgenius.com/go/4090948afae2aaaf49-2019 - For more info on Asha Sadan, please contact EnE info@empowerexcel.org
- Dallas team at Minnie’s Food Pantry: Served 83 needy families
We Love Our Seniors
- Music for Seniors Program (led by Tanisha Tol): The seniors enjoyed the program very much and a few came up to us personally and expressed how happy they were to have us there. They even said they would like to hear us play for them more often. It is also interesting to note that a 74 old lady who attended SJSU about 50+ years back told us she couldn’t play in the marching band since women weren’t allowed, and was happy to see young girls playing instruments
- Project Knitbuds (led by Mrudula Chodavarapu): We spent qulaity time with our seniors by engaging them in knitting activity. All beanies and scarves made with seniors are going to sick children at Stanford hospital
- Laundry Help: We helped with weekly laundry chores
- Tech Help Sessions: We helped resolve tech issues related to laptops, smartphones etc.
Our Special Friends and STEM Projects with Kids
- Infuse Arts and Crafts: helped special needs children with arts and crafts actvitivies, setup and cleanup
- Friends Together – Infuse and Surya: We love spending time and bonding with our special friends. We meet every month on fixed days
- STEM session at Public Library (led by Anurag and Ashwin): We helped kids build a Cardboard Tube Speaker System. Our voluteers also helped kids build tallest or most stable towers using Marshmallow and toothpick or spaghetti
- Special Olympics Spring Games 2019: E&E volunteers helped out at one of the largest competitions for special needs kids who competed in Swimming, Tennis, and Track & Field. Our volunteers did various tasks such as staging track and field events, timing and presenting awards, organizing swimming event, acting as ball persons on tennis courts and with developmental skills
At Various Community Events
- Sponsoring Kids Education in India (led by Divija Hasteer): E&E is very proud and happy to share that Divija Hasteer, a senior at St. Francis High school, Mountain View collected money by teaching chess to sponsor education of two kids at a shelter in India. These two kids successfully passed their SSC exam recently
- Bollywood Fitness Classes (led by Anika Agarwal): Anika conducted two Bollywood fitness classes at Alum Rock Library
- Beautify San Jose: By uniting together as a community we decided to do something about the massive amount trash we create. We picked up the trash, one piece at a time and had fun while doing it
- Plant Sale for Charity: We helped with setup and selling vegetable plants for charity. Some of the plants we sold include Indian Eggplant, laplap beans, green yard long beans, guwar beans, bitter gourd, snake gourd, gongura, dosaikai and Persian cucumber
- Nursery Work: We did nursery work at our City Forest
- E&E Texas Chapter Events: We contributed to stocking, sorting and preparing boxes for needy at a shelter in Texas
