Ekal Vidyalaya Foundation Chicago holds fundraising concert

Ekal Vidyalaya Foundation (EVF) benefit concert was held by Sushil Baweja Group on Jul 12. Around 475 people attended this melodious evening. The fundraising event started with prayers by Aayushi Chuedgar, Anjali Chuedgar, Avni Patel, Tej Desai and Dev Desai. The chief guests were Mr & Mrs Om Gupta welcomed the artists on the stage. Shital Shah and Ashish Gupta were the Masters of Ceremony. The vote of thanks was given by Dr. Hasmukhbhai Shah.

The EVF is an independent non-government and non-profit (501-3C) global organization that facilitates the development of one-teacher schools in tribal-rural areas. The main activities include health care, development, empowerment, and basic education.

Typically, an Ekal Vidyalaya class has 30-40 children in the age group of 5 to 14 years where the children are offered 5 years of schooling. The mission of Ekal Vidyalaya is to completely remove illiteracy from rural and tribal India by 2011. Currently more than 27,000 such schools are operating in India and are educating 813,420 children everyday.

To accomplish their goal, the Ekal movement is to set up 100,000 schools by their deadline year. This will cover nearly all the villages that do not already have schools.

In the health care education, the emphasis is on hygiene, sanitation, first aid, maternal & child care, treatment of common diseases (like diarrhea or malaria) and help in guiding to nearby pharmacy/hospital/specialty hospital as per need. Currently, Ekal movements are serving 11,450 health centers in India.

The organization is primarily run by volunteers to keep administration cost low to a maximum of 10%. By donating $365 (dollar a day), you can sponsor one Ekal Vidyalaya. Your generous donation will change the life of 30-40 children. The donations in the U.S are tax deductible. For more information visit www.ekal.org

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Anish Mahajan appointed White House Fellow

Anish Mahajan, an Indian- American intern and health services researcher has been appointed as one of the 15 persons to be a White House fellow this year. Mahajan, 34, an emerging leader in California is the only Indian-American to figure in the prestigious list. Mahajan was a Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholar and completed a Master of Science in Health Services at University of California Los Angeles. He has led innovative research collaborations between academic, government and relevant stakeholder organizations on an array of domestic and international health policy issues.

The White House said, Mahajan has given presentations and published numerous peerreviewed articles on topics including HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment, the private sector response to the South African AIDS epidemic, high-deductible health plans and adherence to medications for chronic illnesses.

Mahajan's work has addressed health care challenges in the US, India, and South Africa. Mahajan has previously served as a consultant to The Ford Foundation and RAND Corporation. He is currently serving a two-year term as a publicly elected council member on a City of Los Angeles neighborhood council.He is also Vice-Chair on the council's Public Policy Committee. Mahajan received a BA in Public Policy and MD from Brown University. He also earned a M.P.H. in International Health from Harvard School of Public Health.

Anish Mahajan is an internist and health services researcher. He was a Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholar and completed a Master of Science in Health Services at UCLA. Dr. Mahajan is committed to the ideal that health policy formulation should be informed by scientific evidence and stakeholder engagement. He has led innovative research collaborations between academic, government, and relevant stakeholder organizations on an array of domestic and international health policy issues.

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Krishna Kumar: Dedicated to Relieve People of Chronic Pain

Krishna Kumar, a Canadian of Indian origin and neurosurgeon knows more than anyone else that "Chronic pain is real. It alters your personality. It alters the functioning of your brain." Nearly six per cent of the human population suffer from chronic pain to some degree and that it can be caused by just about anything including slight accidents, minor surgery or even diseases like diabetes or multiple sclerosis. Not many people of aware of this. Even less understood is the human toll it takes on people who can no longer work and who sometimes spiral into poverty, depression, drugs, alcohol and suicide. "It manifests into a very damaging thing," Kumar says.

Dr. Kumar is internationally known for his research in treating chronic pain. The neurosurgeon is famous for treating chronic pain with spinal implant therapy rather than conventional therapies. To avoid the need for pain medication, he has also developed a programmable and implantable pump for patients. He has initiated a deep brain stimulation technique in which an electrode delivers lowvoltage stimulation to the brain to reduce the feeling of chronic pain.

Kumar believes he can lessen the suffering, to some extent, of anyone with chronic pain through the three procedures he has developed. They include brain implants, spinal cord implants and a programmable implantable pump inserted under the skin that dispenses prescribed doses of pain medication.

Also renowned for his ground-breaking work treating movement disorders like Parkinson’s disease and essential tremors through deep brain implants.

For this work, Kumar has been honored with the Order of Canada this year. Based in Saskatchewan province of Canada, 78-year-old Kumar has practiced neurosurgery in Canada for almost five decades. Apart from receiving almost two dozen national and international awards, he has also been honored with two lecturerships named after him. Last year, he was named the provincial Saskatchewan Physician of the Year for his medical services..

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The Mandala Concert at the Rubin Museum of Art

 The Rubin Museum of Art will present The Mandala Concert on September 16, 2009 at 7:00 PM, in conjunction with its major exhibition Mandala: The Perfect Circle, opening on August 14, 2009 and on view through January 11, 2010.The exhibition explores Himalayan Buddhism’s artistic representation of man and the universe. A mandala is most often conceived as concentric circles, circles within squares, squares within circles, lotus blossoms, six-pronged stars, or inverted, crossed triangles. The Mandala Concert, collaboration between celebrated composer/conductor Joel Thome and noted artist Harry Doolittle, will showcase both Thome’s compositions using mandala forms as notation and Doolittle’s mandala paintings, which will be viewed on the screen in the museum’s theater during the performance. Thome is known for creating his own notational system based on mandalas and strikingly drawn on seethrough velour sheets. Doolittle’s mandala paintings are applied by using acrylic colors beneath and on glass, which are then cemented to canvas boards.

Among the mandala-notated Thome works included in the program are C,ES,ES for string quartet, performed by the Scorchio String Quartet, named by David Bowie, whose members are Gregor Kitzis, violin, Martha Mooke, viola, Julie Goodale, viola and Leah Coloff, cello. Other works include Para Manuel for violin solo performed by violinist Gregor Kitzis, and Canto XIV for solo flute performed by Linda Wetherill on platinum, gold and jade flutes. The concert will close with the world premiere of Canto XV with Toshi Makihara, percussionist.

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