• 17-02-2011Chairman Mr. U.Vasudeva Rao, President Col. HMS Murthy, Chairman of welfare Projects Brig.K.Balasubramaniam and Mr. Bharat Sarronwala visited some of the Schools and distributed biscuits, toothbrush and tooth paste to the students.
  
  
• 26-01-2011Flag Hoisting Ceremony at Sri Chennakeshavaswamy Higher Primary School. Attended by Chairman Mr. U.Vasudeva Rao, President Col. HMS Murthy, Mr. Santosh Talwar and Mr. B S Lamba.
  
  
• 14-01-2011Robert Bosch Engineering and Business Solutions Ltd have assisted us in setting up of Library in Sri Chennakeshavaswamy Higher Primary School
  
  
• 06-12-2011SBI 12th Main, Indiranagar, Bangalore 560 038 Donated three computers to Sri Chennakeshavaswamy Higher School.
  
  
• 30-09-2011Health Check completed in all 6 schools and follow up action being taken. Doctors have opined that the general health of the students have improved considerably compared to last year.
  
  Mr.Bharat Sarronwala Donated two colour TVs, Gas Stove, two rolls of rubber sheets to RVM Humanitarian transit Home
  
  
• 10-8-2010 Chinmaya Mission Hospital conducted General Health check up of all students. Sankara Eye Hospital conducted the Eye check up of all students. Ambedkar Dental College will be conducting Dental check up of the students during the last week of August 10.
  
  
• Academic Year 2010-11 We have added two more schools during this year with a total strength of 450 students to provide them with Nutritious drink and scholarship. The total number of students who are provided with the nutritious drink in the morning is around 2000.
  1. RBANMS English Primari School, St.John’s Church Road, Bangalore
  2. Hindu Balika Patashala, Indian School. Sri Dharmaraja Koil Street, Bangalore
  
  
• 31-7-2010 Held our 9th Annual General Body Meeting.
  
  
• 26-7-2010 The 9th Annual General Body Meeting of the Society will be held on 31st July 2010 at Indiranagar Club, Bangalore at 11.30 am.
  
  
• 19-7-2010 Commenced General Health Check up of the students by Doctors of Chinmaya Mission Hospital. Eye Testing and Dental Check up will follow.
  
  
• 19-7-2010 Distributed Uniforms, school bags, shoes and socks to the newly admitted Students.
  
  
• 16-7-2010 Distributed Note Books to all the 1550 students of our 6 schools. Provided 10 Computer tables and chairs to Hindu Balika Patashala in Dharmaraja Koil Street, Bangalore.
  
  
• 23-6-2010 Gave Scholarships of Rs.2000/- each to 80 deserving students. One scholarship of Rs. 15000/- to Ms.Gayathri to pursue II P U C. One scholarship of Rs. 18090/- to Mr. Thennarasan to pursue II Engineering.
  
  
• 23-11-09: Maj Gen Harish Kapoor visited the following schools along with Brig. K Balasubramaniam and he was immensely please with our work.
  1. Sri chennakeshaswamy Senior Primary School
  2. Ramakrishna Vidyalaya
  3. RBANMS Cantonment School
  
  
• 21-11-09: Students and faculty of Anupama college of Management studies and sciences visited Sri chennakeshaswamy higher primary school and Rama Krishna Vivekananda Vidyalaya. Brig. K. Balasubramaniam explained them about the organization and our activities.

• Times Of India - Life comes full circle for them
• DNA - Age is no barrier for them
• Deccan Chronicle - Retired not tired, they lend a hand
• Dainik Jagran - Senior citizens come to the fore to serve the poor
• Deccan Chronicle - Seniors with a mission
• Deccan Herald - Seniors for a noble cause

Senior Citizens, Bangalore. A decade of service

In July 2001, late Mr. Romesh Khanna, along with a few likeminded people founded this NGO with the primary objective of rendering some assistance to the children from the underprivileged strata of our society. A noble thought indeed! Very first meeting of the executive committee consisting of 4 members was held in July 2001. I am very happy to see Mrs. Indira Khanna here today. Thank you madam for gracing this occasion. Brig Balasubramaniam was one of the other 3. We also have with us other 2 members as well, namely, Mr. Dharwar & Wg. Comdr.Paul Louzado VSM. That is full quorum of the first historic meeting is here today!
Besides the original 4, we also have with us some other early members. I am grateful to Brig Balasubramaniam & Col. Murthy for locating & contacting many of them.
Once again I extend a special welcome to all of them.

Friends, today we have completed a decade of service.

Now is a good time to look back on these 10 years.
Sometime in 2004, Mr. Romesh Khanna requested me take over the chairmanship. It was then a small group of about 15 members. Our total budget for the year was a few thousand rupees. Thanks to the effort put in by that small group & subsequently the rest of you, we are today a group of about 45 with annual budget of over 10 lacs. We have funds in hand to the tune of Rs.30 Lacs.
As per the founder Chairman’s vision, we consciously decided to concentrate on the future citizens of the country. Our major achievement has been providing nutritious breakfast for about 1,600 students in 7 schools where most of the students were coming to school without having any breakfast. Since introduction of the breakfast, not only their general condition of health improved-the attendance also improved.

Another equally important activity has been annual health check up i.e. general check up, dental check up & eye check up. Providing scholarships to a large number of students. Providing them with clean drinking water, toilet facilities, books, uniforms, shoes, fans, arranging & providing utensils for their midday meals etc. Computer aided teaching facility & a library in Chennakeshava School. Computers in all schools. English teaching by volunteers amongst us & some outside volunteers as well. Training of teachers in English language & computer usage etc. Occasional outings for the students. That my friends is quite a lot.
Besides, we have also been helping the destitute in a Humanitarian Home where among other things we set up a Physiotherapy center. We provided them with regular supply of clothes, beds, medicines etc.
From time to time we have also rendered some assistance to an old age home.

Now important thing for all of us to note is who did all this. Certainly not I!  You made me the Chairman- so I simply sat on the chair & let others do the work.
Let us start with the all important function of handling the finances, a vital part of any organization. Col. Murthy has been doing it single handedly & has done an outstanding job of getting best value for our limited resources. Our single most expensive activity besides scholarships is the breakfast. Here he has done a superb job of organizing it in a very scientific & systematic way of execution. He has also been carrying the burden of administration. He personally supervised the construction of toilets in Chennakeshava School. He made my job very easy! There is a much greater role that he has played. I will come to that later. Thank you Col.

 
Now the schools. There have been two stalwarts although we now have few more volunteers. They are Brig. Balasubramaniam & Santosh Talwar. Sitting here, it is difficult to visualize the physical efforts that have gone into delivering these services to the schools. That has been a whole time job for them. They are totally committed to the cause. My special admiration goes to Brig. I am younger to him. I don’t think I would be physically able to do what he has been doing over the years. I am personally grateful to you Brig. We are missing Santosh today. He – besides attending to lot of school work like health check up etc.-together with AVM Krishnaswamy & Lamba has taken the of initiative to teach spoken English to children as well as held workshops to train teachers in English language. Krishnaswamy and Lamba are here. As for as servicing the schools is concerned, I am glad that we now have few more volunteers to share this burden.  I.e. Shyam, Dev Ahuja, Kamath & Ashwani Khurana.
There are also many other volunteers including some non-members teaching English to children. They are; Anita & Dev Ahuja, Asha Kamath, Jayanti Kadambi, Shakuntala Pai, Sarsa Mohandas, Tony Rodricks. Last 3 are non-members. My very sincere thanks to all of them.
As far as the destitute home is concerned, while quite a few have pitched in from time to time, Virendra Singh did most of the work to render whatever assistance our limited resources would permit. He could not be here with us today.

Shyam Aggarwal has been very active at Sonahallipura village. He has been struggling to help them conserve rain water and it appears that at long last his pet project will see the light of day. He & some other members have donated some funds for this project. He has also succeeded in setting up a microfinance facility partly financed by him & partly by Rotary club and that is working well. Ours has only been a moral support in this endeavor of his.

Our young & ever-energetic member Parthasarathy has been instrumental in getting us very interesting speakers at every meeting without which our meetings would have been rather drab. More importantly, he was instrumental in introducing & implementing computer aided teaching facility in Chennakeshava School. He too is away in Mumbai.

Now a few words about funds.
One evening about 3 years back Col. Murthy called me home for a drink. His daughter Sheela Murthy was there. I was meeting her for the first time. After a few minutes of pleasantry she completely surprised me by handing over a cheque for Rs.1 Lac! I thanked her profusely for the generous donation. While I thought it was very generous, she however did not think it was generous enough. Next year we got a little over 10 lacs from her.  This year too she has made arrangement for donation of similar amount.
She had brought a big delegation of representatives from United Way, Washington, one of the largest charitable NGOs in the world, to Chennakeshava School. United Way had honoured her with ‘The donor of the year’ award & in her acceptance speech she mentioned India & Chennakeshava School in particular. We honoured her & with honorary membership of our organization. Besides Sheela, Col on his own part has been making handsome donations from time to time.  Yet another big reason to thank you Col.
Another donor worth mentioning is my friend from Long Island USA, Mr. Subhash Bhatia who has provided us excellent office space with the entire infrastructure free of any rent. He has been contributing over a lac of rupees a year toward our administrative expenses, paid a lac of rupees for breakfast. When he & his wife attended one of our meetings he handed over a cheque for 1 lac of Rs. We have honoured him with our honorary membership.
Indian arm of Bosch of Germany donated Rs. 2 lacs for setting up a library at Chennakeshava School. They will also pay the salary of the librarian. Further they have offered to fund some infrastructure like benches etc.  We are happy to have the representative of Bosch with us today. Akshaya Foundation provided valuable advice in setting up this library. Our grateful thanks to both these orgainzations.
Late Mr. Khanna’s family has made generous donations of over 2 lacs. Some of you may know that the family funded building an additional room in the school which came in handy for locating the computers.

Brig Balasubramaniam, through his relations in New Zealand & Australia, has been getting us very handsome donations every year. Dr. Chandran his nephew has donated over Rs. 6 lacs. Additionally, Brig has been able to get additional 4 lacs. I hope Dr. Chandran will continue to support our cause. In fact it was the visit of Dr. Chandran to Chennakeshava School that acted as a catalyst for starting the breakfast service. Another reason to thank you Brig.
My ex-employer, Larsen & Toubro donated 3 lacs of RS.
Jos Palathinkal’s son-in-law Mr. Paul from Dubai sent a lac of Rs. directly to Chennakeshava School.
A school Mistress, Parvathy, donated a lac of Rs. simply on my son mentioning our activities to her! I was touched by this action of a complete stranger.
Some other donors are Brig Seghal a friend of Col. Murthy donated a lac of Rs. when he attended one of our meetings. Dr.Shankar Narayan donated 1.5 Lacs.
From our members, biggest donation will be from Baldev Bhatia who has pledged Rs. 1 lac a year for scholarship for Chennakeshava school students. Thank you Baldev for the most generous offer. May you live a long & healthy life.Besides our friendship, we now have an additional stake in your longevity!
Tharanath Rao, though a comparatively new member has chipped in a big way. He has supplied 60 benches with attached desks to Chennakeshava School at a cost of Rs. 3 lacs plus has made donations for scholarships. Thank you Tharu.
Bharat Sarronwala has collected donations & with his own generous contribution donated over Rs.3 Lakhs on different occasions.
Santosh Talwar has been regularly getting donations for scholarship from his children amounting to more than 1.4 lacs so far.       U V. Rao 1.85 lacs.
Bharat Sarronwala, Col Murthy, Santosh converted their anniversary celebrations into fund raising events! I recommend others to follow suit!

Many of the executive committee members have been donating Rs. 10,000 every year.
I am happy to say here that response from our members & visiting guests to our appeal for scholarship donation has been very generous.
We have 3 life members who have paid Rs. 30,000 each. I.e.Santosh, Chabra & Shyam.
I must mention one name again i.e. Bharat Sarronwala who has been a great source of advice & support. He has been responsible for a lot of initiatives. Thank you Bharat.
Friends, simply for want of time, I have restricted the names to those who have donated a lac and above. All of you have made generous donations one time or the other & also when we passed the hat around on several occasions. Setting up the physiotherapy center at the destitute home, providing some critical equipment for destitute hospital & construction of dwellings for flood affected [Rs. 3 lacs] are some examples. My gratitude is the same irrespective of the size of the donation. No amount is too small or any too big. Thank you all. I look forward to continued support from all of you to get donations from your friends. 
Fellow members, we have come a long way in the past decade. We have a longer way ahead. We give scholarships to a large number of outgoing students. As a next step we should try & follow up their performance, with a view to get them vocational training or even in case of a few deserving candidates admission to professional colleges. Idea is to make them employable. [My interaction with the students] This in my view is our next challenge.
Now coming to our organization, all of us must try & get some younger members into our fold to carry on the good work.

We need to build a corpus which should make our activities sustainable over a long period of time. We need a corpus of at least Rs. one Crore if not more. I would appeal to all of you to continue to strive to get donations from corporates & friends.
Before concluding let me make one significant observation. What is unique about our group is that it is---unlike many other organizations---very homogeneous without any frictions, internal politics etc. For that, I must give all of you full credit. Same applies to the executive committee as well. Let us maintain this friendly & open atmosphere and good fellowship.
I want to thank profusely all of you & Executive Committee members in particular for the unstinted support & cooperation I received from you.
Once again our thanks to the elder members whose blessings & support we seek.
Before concluding, I want to thank Indiranagar Club for allowing us to hold our meetings here. Thanks to Col’s Murthy’s efforts, twice a year they don’t charge for the hall.
For any errors & omissions on my part, I take refuge under my old age & seek your pardon!
Thank you.   
30-07-2011.
To celebrate the Decade of Service I want to make a modest donation today.
All of us would like to present a memento to our seniors as a token of our appreciation for the foundation laid by them.
[Mementos to Indira Khanna &other early members]