VASANTHAM 2019
Dear Members,
Vanakkam! எல்லோர்க்கும் எங்கள் அன்பு வணக்கங்கள்!! Our Vasantham 2019 sponsored by Mass Mutual TriState & Kumon of Clifton Park – Chithirai Thirunaal Kondaattam was a huge success. 168 performers, more than 50 volunteers, 22 performances and a lip smacking Vasantha bhavan style full meals dinner and snacks. That’s Vasantham 2019 for you. What a great show !! We thank each one of you from the bottom of our hearts for attending and being a part of this celebration of the Tamil New Year and onset of Spring and making this event a resounding success. Without your unflinching support and cooperation, our New York Albany Tamil Sangam can never stage events of such a large-scale year after year.
Impressed by the way our sangam organised the event, few large hearted patrons inquired us about the total cost of the event and ways to donate to NYATS. For all of you who are interested to donate, here is the link to donate
Our Membership team and marketing team worked really hard to bring around $4000 for Vasantham 2019 but our goal was to raise $5500. We thank all of our Business Sponsors and Individual sponsors for being generous in extending your monetary support to NYATS. Our sincere Thanks to new and existing NYATS members for registering and renewing your memberships. You are what makes up the NYATS community and we are happy to have you on board! Having said that, we are still short of $1500. If any of you is interested in extending monetary support to our sangam, please do so by clicking the above link. Thanks to all the individual donors.
Now please take time to read the below long message that outlines the various positives and things to consider/improve for future events.
Our Vasantham event always holds a significant importance among members of our community. For it is when a new Tamil calendar year begins. For it is when nature resumes her loveliness. For it is when birds nest and flowers boom. It is what we call “Spring” or “Chithirai”. Every year our members await with bated breath for this event and have always turned up in big numbers with their families. This year was no different. We are happy to share with you that a record 450 + members graced this Vasantham event and made it a huge success. Attendance numbers likes these give motivation and confidence to our committee to stage even bigger events for our members. For this, we owe you a big thank you. !!
An event of such a big scale is only possible when all the moving parts come together at the right time and work in unison. We are proud to share with you that all our teams went the extra mile in fulfilling all the needs beyond expectations. Our beautiful women volunteers dressed up in silk sarees took care of Virunthombal with their warm welcome to our beloved members. Our beautiful women volunteers dressed up in silk sarees took care of Virunthombal with their warm welcome to our beloved members . They handed over fragrant fresh Malligaipoo (Fresh Jasmine string – sponsored by one of our member) to all our women members who gracefully adorned it on their hair. Our youth volunteers helped to continue the tradition of our Thiruvizha setup by volunteering in Face painting and Balloon twisting activities and helping in popcorn making & distribution.
Our decoration team loaded with several youth and young adult volunteers took creativity to a different level by literally bringing Vasantham on stage. With colorful peacocks at the center and waterfalls and blooming tree on the ends, our decoration team created a beautiful spring landscape that reminded everyone how a community organization can bring out the hidden talents amongst its members.
Our cultural team burnt the midnight oil and made sure everything was in order for the rehearsal and the main event. They helped spread the buzz with attractive event posters, coordinated with all the choreographers and participants to make sure everyone was taken care of and created brochures to list the program order.
Our grocery purchasing team was as usual spot on in getting all the raw materials needed for the historic Vasantha Bhavan. Our cooking team tirelessly cooked all the mouth watering Vasantha Bhavan style dishes with great quality and delivered it bang on time. Our one of a kind Vasantha Bhavan menu included the following items: Vathal kulambu, Sambar, Poondu Rasam, Potato poriyal, Sorakkai koottu, Paruppu Payasam, More, Appalam, lemon pickle. Every item was so delicious that all of our guests had them heartful. Beeda and Banana to complete the dinner was the icing on the cake that everyone craved for. Eating our delicious food on the “Paakku Mattai” plate (Areca leaf plate),a natural, eco-friendly & biodegradable plate, gave a sense a satisfaction to everyone that our sangam is indeed eco-conscious.
Our serving team consisting of many youth volunteers served snack and dinner with dedication and made sure every member was attended to with proper care.
We take this opportunity to thank every single volunteer who served our community with distinction by taking up these roles. It is only with dedicated volunteers like you, can we run such community organizations like our Tamil Sangam.
We promised to start the event at 3 PM and serve dinner at 7:30 PM. We almost did it. We started the program right on time and served dinner at 7:45 PM. We could do this only because of our excellent stage managers consisting of only youth volunteers who proactively lined up performers backstage based on the program order and because of our dynamic MCs who ran the show without any lag. We also thank members like you who turned up early and stayed till the end and encouraged every performance with your thunderous clap. We promise that we will continue to improve and manage our events better in the future as well.
The event itself was colorful and joyful courtesy of some amazing performances on stage. We had small kids and young kids dancing to tapping numbers. We had singers lending their voice to beautiful songs. We had adults perform an eye-catching dance-musical comedy drama. And then we had our women debate each other in the women only pattimandram that was very well received by our audience. In terms of the variety of performances, we can safely conclude that this is one of the best events our NY Albany Tamil Sangam has staged. Overall the talent on display was there for everyone to see. The standard of all performances will only keep going north. We take this opportunity to thank every single performer who stepped on to the stage and breathed life into this beautiful event.
As with life, there are always areas of improvements in anything we do. Below are some of the points to consider / Remember for future events.
- Lots of trash left behind in the HCC Hall/Class rooms/Dining room.
A good nonprofit organization is one that minimizes the overheads and provides maximum value to its stakeholders. We as a sangam always think about utilizing our funds in the best way possible with fewer overheads. Even the food menu for all our events is discussed and debated extensively to select items in such a way they provide maximum value with minimum wastage and at a lesser cost. We always look for avenues to reduces our expenses and improve our efficiency. One such avenue is the overhead cost involved in the post event cleanup. If we as members of this community can act more responsibly, the amount of money that we spend towards this major post event cleanup can very easily be reduced. We kindly request all our members to place the trash in trash cans and make sure the place is left tidy and clean.
- RSVP to Evite:
We always send evites to all our members through email. This is done to make sure that we get an estimate of number of guests that we expect for an event. This helps our purchasing team and cooking team during food preparations. For Vasantham 2019, the total RSVP count was 250. We prepared ourselves for 350 guests. But we were pleasantly surprised to see 450 + guests turning up for the event. Our cooking team then had to work against the clock in preparing extra rice to meet the demand without any delay. In order to prepare ourselves better for future events, we kindly request all our guests to RSVP for the evites. It saves a lot of time for our teams and directly improves the experience for the guests as well.
We look forward to your continued support and encouragement for NYATS. We welcome all comments and suggestions. Please complete this survey to provide your feedback by clicking this link. https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdSJyFlG1nw0nsGfQY4qzJ1m7lXLZgxu3tg9oIzdAJSixFgeg/viewform
You can also send your feedback by sending email to contact@nyalbanytamilsangam.com.
Thank you once again. Here is wishing everyone a beautiful spring and eventful summer of 2019. See you all at summer picnic.
Thanks,
NYATS Executive Team
