We’re back – post pandemic! Don’t miss the biggest party of the new year!  Please join IASF and the community for Valentines Bash 2023 – A formal evening complete with dinner, entertainment and plenty of surprises.  Those of you who have attended this event in the past will recall the amazing experience.  This promises to be our best event yet!

Date: Feb 11 (Saturday) 5:30 PM onward
Venue: Newark Pavilion, 6430 Thornton Ave, Fremont, CA 94560

Bring the whole family and celebrate your love on Valentine’s Day! Due to popular demand, the event will sell out this year so please buy your tickets now using instructions on this page.

VIP/Group tickets: please contact Sarita Panda at (408) 507-0178
Sponsorship: please contact Prasanta Behera at (408) 598-9298

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December 2022 newsletter

Mo School letter, Feb 2022

Holiday Greetings 2021

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Prashanti International School is located in Puri, Odisha, India. It serves students from nearby villages. Most of the students are either orphans or severely economically disadvantaged. This school was built by World Family Foundation (WFF) which is based in Ojai, California, USA. For the last 20 years, WFF has been committed to helping the poorest of the poor children to break the barrier of poverty by providing quality education.

WFF’s mission aligns with that of IASF. We first worked with WFF in 2020 when the IASF Sacramento team donated $1000 towards Prashanti School’s new Medical Fund.

2023 Goals

The school is expanding to serve more students and provide better education. The school needs funds for adding physics and chemistry labs, which IASF is raising funds for.

The fundraising goal: $7,000

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Since its founding in 1999, IASF has been primarily focused on projects in Odisha and locally in the Bay Area. However, we have also funded projects in a few other places during major calamities such as the Tsunami of 2004, Katrina (2005), Haiti earthquake (2010) and some others.   Our involvement in Nepal began when a few IASF members went on a hike to the Everest Base Camp in Oct 2022. In addition to hiking and enjoying the towering Himalayan peaks and crossing tumultuous rivers, the hikers saw first hand the poverty affecting children in Nepal. Nepal is still an under-developed country, lacking resources to uplift these children. The team felt compelled to help these children. They got involved with two local NGOs that are working on empowering children and women and pooled together some money to help these causes. The team, in collaboration with IASF, is working on supporting…

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On April 1, 2021, IASF launched a new initiative called IASF Shikhya, in partnership with Aveti Learning. The goal of this initiative is to provide world class, digital learning to underprivileged students in grades 1-10 in Odia-medium schools all over Odisha. Each government-run, Odia-medium school has many students from poor families who can’t afford after-school tuition, which is essential in proper learning of the subject matters taught in classrooms. With the IASF Shikhya program, these students can get an annual subscription to the state-of-the-art Aveti Learning App, with access to extensive course content, including over 3000 videos and 60,000+ problems.

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IASF collaborated with Odisha.ml (an organization promoting Machine Learning) and OSA (Odisha Society of Americas) convention 2022 (California), in organizing a Hackathon in June 2022. The goal was to promote students (grade 8-12) from the Odia community across the world to participate.

There were 4 broad categories:

1. Agriculture and Climate Change
2. Sanitation and Public Health
3. Education
4. Bringing the Odia community together

A total of 20 teams registered for the hackathon, of which 4 were from Odisha. The hackathon was done remotely over a period of 4 weeks by the students at home. Students provided a 5 minutes video along with other code or presentation for the evaluation.

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OSA Convention provided a perfect opportunity for the youth to get involved. IASF formally launched the IASF-Youth wing (A new membership category that included school and college going kids interested in making a difference aligned with IASF mission). Young people have the ideas, the creativity and great energy to shape a better world and take IASF to new heights. They are taking the charge. In this segment several IASF youth members interviewing some of the permanent and board members to hear their thoughts. Please watch.

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Family Supportive Housing (FSH) is an organization that has been helping homeless single and two-parent families with children remain together while addressing their needs for food, shelter, employment, and education, for thirty years now. Their mission is to help families avoid the trap and cycle of homelessness by helping them get on their feet immediately after a tragic event such as job loss, home loss, etc. Their shelters accommodate up to 35 families at a time for up to 90 days and close to 60% of their residents are children under the age of eighteen. In light of COVID-19, IASF reached out to its local community to partner with Family Supportive Housing (FSH) in East Side San Jose. Struggling to meet demand during lockdown and quarantine restrictions, IASF fundraised to donate essential items such as groceries and cutleries for families and learning tools for kids.  With more than half of…

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Change the world by helping “One Child at a Time” is an initiative by the World Family Foundation (WFF). WFF is a non-profit organization based in Ojai, California, USA. They are committed to help the poorest of the poor children to break the barrier of poverty by providing quality education. WFF has built Prashanti International School in Puri, Odisha, India.

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IASF is working with WRKSPOT Foundation to help rebuild the home to 53 needy kids. All of these kids are displaced and need immediate financial help to rebuild the infrastructure that was destroyed in Cyclone FANI. WRKSPOT Foundation was established in 2018. It’s first project is to change the lives of 53 kids in the city of Bhubaneswar, Odisha, India. WRKSPOT’s goal is to help children learn to learn to dream and achieve. They have a 3-step formula to achieve our goal – feed healthy food, provide safe environment, create awareness in children the importance of mental and physical fitness at an early age. Please visit their website http://www.WRKSPOT.FOUNDATION for details. Thank you for all your generous support – we are no more accepting donations for this cause.    

10/16