The Tamil Makkal Mandaram Youth Wing recently ran an Olympics event, their first ever project, on June 3rd, 2018. Held at Nashua High School North from 2 to 5PM, the young TMM volunteers who consist of children in the 9th grade and below managed and thought of everything necessary to run the first ever TMM Youth Olympics. They worked extremely hard for 2 months to conduct this event while keeping up with their schoolwork and finals. They met about once every two weeks to finalize the plans for the event with some guidance from two adults, Lakshmi Rajagopal and Geetha Ananth who are the Youth Wing coordinators. The Youth Wing also handled all the registrations coming in and organized the participants into their specific events and the places they were assigned. The lead of this event was taken over by Ananya Venkatesan with help of the TMM Youth Wing, who are Swetha Saravanakumar, Adhithi Venkatesan, Kathir Meyyappan, Rishi Krishnan, Sruthi Ramesh, Arkesh Ramesh, Kalyan Thillai, Saadhvi Raghav, Arya Swamy, Jeyashakthi Kannan, Lochan Karthikeyan, Sudarshan Prasanna, Anand Soma, Sinthya Kumar, Kavin Balaji, Saranya Sribalaharan, Prasanth Ganeshbabu, Srishti Srinath, Nithin Saravanan, Rithika Saravanan, Sudar Meyyappan, Laya Raju, Darshan Krishnaswamy, Navein Sribalaharan, and Nithin Chandra.

The TMM Youth Olympics included track and field events such as the 100 meter dash, 200 meter dash, 400 meter relay, long jump, and javelin throw events that included ages ranging from 5 to 13. There were also optional games on the side such as the bean bag toss and ring toss for kids of all ages to participate in. At the end while calculating the results, other exciting events including tug of war, sack races, and skipping races, were held and organized by the youth group volunteers. There were concession stands selling chips, baked goods, and drinks on the side along with Biriyani Pot, one of our biggest sponsors, selling food as well. At the end of the day, a large award ceremony was held for all winners who earned a gold, silver, and/or bronze medals. Because the TMM Youth Wing kids wanted to portray the event very closely to the actual Olympics, they constructed a podium displaying first through third place that the winners were able to stand on.

Most importantly, all proceeds from this event were donated to a charity called Sick Kids Canada decided by voting. Sick Kids Canada is a hospital that conducts research to find cures for diseases such as BMMRD. This rare disease is a distinct childhood cancer predisposition syndrome that results from biallelic germline mutations in one of the five MMR genes, MLH1, MSH2, MSH6, EPCAM or PMS2. The tumor spectrum is very broad, including mainly hematological, brain and intestinal tract tumors. Since no cure has been found for this disease, the TMM Youth Wing decided to donate the money raised to this charity to aid scientists in finding a cure that can stop this disease.

Along with the ticket sales, the TMM Youth Wing also collected sponsorships from different businesses and stores. Our sponsors were Biriyani Pot, Dr. Chilean Orthodontics, Kolam Media Creations, Westford Kumon, Sterling Smiles, Leader’s Bank, Enterprise Bank, Anu Rao Realtors, and markate.com. TMM Youth Wing is very grateful for these sponsors and is sending the proceeds to a great cause. 

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