Best wishes to you all. It has been almost two years since I
have been serving our Telugu Association of Connecticut (TACT) as President.
I can say with great pride and satisfaction that our accomplishments during
this short time are noteworthy and will certainly have long lasting impact.
TACT is the largest and oldest of associations
serving the Telugu community in the state of Connecticut. Our state is
sandwiched between Massachusetts in the North and New York/NJ in the south
which have some of the largest concentrations of Telugu speaking people in USA. This fact helped us certain ways and also proved to be a disadvantage in some other
ways. It has been a struggle to match with two neighboring big brothers who
have access to better resources and can conduct similar activities on a much
larger scale. However we tried our best and succeed to certain extent to use
this proximity to big organizations to complement our efforts instead of
treating them as obstacles to our growth. The success of our Diwali 2010
program with Sri Mani Sharma concert is one such example of this productive
cooperation. We wouldn’t have even thought about conducting such expensive
events couple of years back. This is just the beginning. I expect similar cooperation
to continue between all Telugu associations in neighboring states. United we
grow.
There are few other areas that I have been working on to
help serve our community better.
1) Increasethe membership base. Over the last
two years the average attendance to our programs is increasing rapidly. It is
no longer possible to conduct events in small auditoriums to save costs.
However considering the fact that there are about 8000-10,000 people of Telugu
origin in CT, there is still considerable scope to multiply the current reach.
2) Involve all segments of the community. We are one
of the very successful groups of immigrants in terms of accomplishments in
business, professional services and in education. However the participation of
business community, College and University students and professionals (other
than IT) is much less than their actual strength. We worked hard to integrate
them with our activities and succeed to certain extent. I take this opportunity
to thank them, particularly the business community, for their support.
3) Involve in community Service. One of the primary
goals of our organization is to help serve the people in need as much as we can
and participate in community service. I believe it should be our
responsibility to serve the people of the land where we live, make careers and
utilize its services. You will receive more communication on our activities to
achieve this goal. I request all of us to actively participate in those
activities with our children.
4) Improve and increase our current activities and
practices. This include conduct more diversified events, improvement in
communication, internal practices, better organization of programs, inviting
different groups of people to show their talent , quality and frequency
improvement of our Telugu Velugu magazines etc.. There is always a scope to
improve every aspect of the organization. By looking at the record
participation and appreciation we received in every event I believe our efforts
are recognized. Needless to say there is still lot accomplish. I have faith
and confidence that we are on right track and we achieve our goals with your
support. Wishing you all a very happy holidays...
