NSF, Massachusetts successfully completed its regional contests for 2016 at its two chapter locations at Fitchburg State University (FSU) and Tufts University. Over 600 kids in grades 1 through 12 participated in the various bees including Math, Science, Geography, Spelling, Vocabulary, Public Speaking and Essay writing bees. Over 16,000 kids across the 82 chapters throughout the US, participated in the regional contests spread across three weekends between March and May, 2016.

 
Under the leadership of Dr. Ratnam Chitturi, who started the non-profit organization in 1989 in Chicago,  NSF has grown by leaps and bounds.  The organization provides a model for excellence in education like none other in the country. For 26 years now NSF has raised funds in the US via educational contests to provide scholarships to economically challenged kids in India, thus allowing them to avail a college education that they would otherwise not have.

 It takes just $250 for a student to attend college for one year in India. But it changes the life of not just the scholarship recipient, but his or her entire family. What started with a single scholarship in 1989 has now grown to well over 10,000, distributed by the 29 chapters in all across India.

While NSF improves the life of the kids in India, one scholarship at a time, their counterparts in the US are carving their names with their own success stories. NSF kid Syamantak Payra recently won the Intel Foundation Young Scientist award of $50,000 at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair.

Shyam Narayanan, another NSF kid took the U.S. to victory in the International Mathematical Olympaid last year, taking back the trophy from China after 21 years!

NSF kids have won the Scripps Spelling bee competition for several years in a row, that experts are looking into how Indian-origin kids are doing this. Here is a link to the story: http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/video/category/education/3373846-spelling-bee-expert-breaks-down-why-some-win/

These are just a few stories. For more success stories and incredible achievements by NSF kids, please visit our website and our Facebook page.

About 15 years ago, in 2001, we started one chapter in Massachusetts with about 25 contestants participating in the Spelling bee. Today, we have two chapters with over 600 contestants participating in the various bees.

 

Over the April 9-10^th weekend, under the leaderships of Dr. Meledath Govindan, Chief Technical Coordinator, and Ms Revati Mahesh, the Chapter Coordinator , we conducted our first set of contests in Spelling, Vocabulary, Math, Geography, Essay writing and Public Speaking contests. The event was sponsored by Fitchburg State University, MatScience21 and Creation Station. The awards ceremony on Saturday was presided by Shefali Kalyani of We Care Charity and on Sunday by Prashanth Palakurthi, Founder and CEO of Reflexis Systems.  Their speeches about their work and involvement with the community inspired the audience young and old! Nikita Minocha a freshman at Boston University and Nisha Pillai, a high school sophomore at AMSA, both long time NSF participants were our youth speakers and shared their experiences about participating in NSF contests and the positive impact it has had on their lives.

 

On May 1^st, under the leadership of Dr. Meledath Govindan, Chief Technical Coordinator and Shitanshu Shekar, the Chapter Coordinator, contests in Math, Science and Spelling bees were held at Tufts University. The event was sponsored by Dr. Anil Saigal and AcceptU. AcceptU conducted a free College Admissions workshop for parents that was very well received.

 

Ranjani Saigal, Executive Director of Ekal Vidyala Foundation of USA, presided over the awards. Hundreds of children received participation medals and the top three winners received trophies from Ranjani.

 

Avan Shah, a 6^th grader from Andover, MA, who wrote a book “Walks with my Dada”, a collection of short stories told by his grandfather. Avan shared his journey about how he came to write the book and publish it, to the audience. He chose to donate all the money from his book sales to NSF.

 

Raja Selvakumar, a sophomore at MIT, an NSF alum and long time NSF volunteer also spoke about his experience with NSF. He advised the kids to work hard and to never give up on their dreams, and goals.

 

NSF will be releasing the National Finals Invitees list shortly. Those contestants that make the cut off are invited to the 2016 NSF National Finals that will be held at the University of Florida in Tampa, FL, during August 20-21th weekend. Invitees will be notified via email and the list will be published on our website.

 
If you are interested in becoming the next chapter coordinator, or would like to join our dedicated team of volunteers, please contact NSF Northeast Zonal Coordinator : Savitha Rajiv (savitha_usa@yahoo.com)

For more information, please visit our web site: www.northsouth.org. Like us on Facebook: NorthSouthFoundation

Below are the winners from the contests.