India Post News Service

HAYWARD, CA: Pratham SF- Bay Area's Annual fundraiser was held on September 29 at Chabot College in Hayward, CA. Shruti Patel, Pratham Idol winner 2007 kicked off the evening and was followed by Dinmani, first runner up in the competition. Neeraj Tandon and Viraj performed a medley of new and old songs while Victor Uberoi kept the evening moving as the emcee. Poonam Bhatia, Bollywood singer and the star attraction, made a grand entry.

Dressed in glittering black and gold scattered salwar kameez, she was accompanied by Ali Shahbuddin on the keyboard and Ghulam Hyderali on the tabla. Vikas, a local bay Area singer, sang duets with Poonam and a few solos. Another attraction in the latter half of the evening was the dance by the Sahiyar Dance Company who danced a Ganesh medley.Aruna Goradia, Pratham Bay Area Committee Head, said, "Let us change the map of Indian literacy together" while welcoming everyone to the fundraiser.

Local ABC weather anchor, Sandhya Patel took a break from talking about the weather to talk about Pratham's Read India campaign. Promising good weather to the audience till the next day at least, she spoke passionately about India and the literacy campaign. The campaign aims to reach 60 million children across India to educate them in basic literacy skills. She asked the audience to 'join hands with Pratham to build a bridge to the future'. Pratham's literacy efforts were detailed by Usha Rane, program director of Pratham (Madhya Pradesh, Orissa and Maharashtra). She has worked with the MP government in 45 out of 48 districts in Madhya Pradesh and trained 250,000 government school teachers in Pratham's accelerated learning methods.

These methods were then taught in classrooms to over 4 million children in MP. This success is now being replicated across India through the Read India campaign. Usha showed a short movie about Mokhada district where the indigenous people were without any schools and children's reading levels were at zero. With Pratham intervention, the same people were reading fluently in a short span of 45 days.After a short break, Poonam took the stage again and sang new and old melodies. Vikas's solos and duets with Poonam thoroughly entertained the audience.

Ward Heneveld, program officer at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation that recently awarded an over $ 9 million grant along with the Gates Foundation to Pratham reminisced about his long awareness of Pratham's efficiency. Elegantly dressed in Indian attire, Ward spoke about his experience with Pratham while he was in India with the World Bank. "The education process works because Pratham people monitor and analyze the programs", he said. Yogi Patel gave an inspiring speech saying Pratham is the first step to change the illiterate status of 400 million people in India (out of the total 1 billion illiterates in the world).

He followed up with an anecdote about how education had changed his life and brought him to further the cycle by taking up literacy's cause. This was followed by the pledge drive. Within minutes the pledges, checks and cash donations were pouring in. $135,000 was collected and the total donation reached $225,000 after funds were matched by Los Angeles champions.

The more than 50 volunteers who had enthusiastically collected the pledges from over 800 guests then sat down to enjoy Poonam's music. With jokes, 'shairon shayari' and songs ranging from Choti Si Asha to Beedi, Poonam kept everyone entertained till 11pm. Pratham and she sent them all home humming a song, with a smile on their lips, hope in their hearts and renewed determination to have "Every Child in School and Learning Well".