All in all, this was a fantastic show put together by the entire team led by artistic director Guru Anandh and a testament to the months of hard work and that all the singers (Rohini Sivamurthy, Swetha Raghavan Siva, Sunil Nambiar, Srihari Sridhar, Guru Anandh, Vidhya Sudharsan, Priya Anand, Nirmal Ramu, Indu Subramanian) and dancers (Bhanu Guru, Thilaka Ramesh, Priya Balasubramaniam, Nivetha Ravichandran, Krithi Nathan, Prajakta Dhobale, Maha Krishnakumar, Meena Girish, Arti Desai, Ashvini Ganesh, Archana Selvaraj, Suja Sriram, Karthiga Siva, Ramya Sundaresan, Sohini Nath, Bala Venkat) had put in. The lively interactions in Tamil and English between the very talented  MCs for the evening, Visi Tilak and Pavithra Giridharan kept the audience engaged. The fillers were very entertaining and informative, wherein the Foundation honored the Grand Sponsor, Alankar Decors, and the show’s artists, and introduced their work to the audience.   The event video was covered by Krish Velmurugan (http://fb.me/KrispFotos) and photography by Jeyakumar Sathyamoorthy (https://dazzle.smugmug.com/).

Thanks to the many kind and selfless volunteers, the event and the fundraiser was a great a success. SHF raised about $100,000 towards the Wellness on Wheels (WoW), as part of the fundraiser, crossing the halfway mark of $250,000 for the project.  WoW is conceptualized as a mobile health unit  equipped with a mammography unit and cervical screening capabilities besides other medical  facilities. This unit will be capable of traveling to villages in India, to provide access to good medical facilities right where the people live, instead of them having to travel outside of their villages.

SHF also inaugurated a new project  in the US called “ Project HEAL” which stands for Healthy Eating and Living. The goal of this project (http://heal.giftofhealth.us) is to serve the homeless and at-risk population in the US by providing them with nutritious, plant based dinners which will help them lead healthier lives. Meals served by Project HEAL will contain no animal products, so they are humane as well as healthy. There are about 41 million Americans who struggle with hunger, and Sankara hopes to help solve this problem by providing the hungry with healthier food options. Clinical Nutritionist Sneh Jaisingh (http://www.snehjaisingh.com) inaugurated Project HEAL at the event. Contact SHF if you (or your high schoolers) would like to volunteer to help with these community meals.

The guests who attended this event also received a complimentary dinner, which was made possible by over two dozen volunteers and about a dozen local area restaurants.

The event was very memorable and I am already looking forward to the next one!