FREMONT: Sankara Eye Foundation (SEF) in partnership with CLiPS held two Dandiya events on Oct 20 and Oct 27 in San Jose and Santa Clara Convention Centers. The SEF Dandiyas celebrated Navaratri, the nine day festival celebrated in India, with grandeur and style. Around 8,000 people from the Bay Area community participated in the Dandiyas. Friends, families and community members gathered to participate in the dance rituals called garba and dandiya raas.

"Dandiya Raas" is performed by using a pair of short bamboo or wooden sticks struck to a rhythmic motion. The audience, young and old alike, dressed in vibrant colorful attire, formed circles (garba) and danced gracefully with the dandiyas. It was a hypnotically breath taking sight to see the crowd sway entranced to tunes which ranged from devotion to cheer.The event was also a fundraiser for the Sankara Eye hospital, Gujarat.

The speakers included the managing committee members of the Sankara Eye Society (SES), the leader of the rural community eye reach program in India. Dr Ramani, managing trustee of SES talked about the problem of blindness in India. He said that someone goes blind every 2 seconds in India. There is a need to race against the problem with proper eye care and free eye surgeries.

He mentioned that the target is to reach an annual rate of 125,000 free eye surgeries in 2008 from the current 60,000 surgeries. Jyotsna Kaki, who lost her eyesight in 2004 due to an operation, gave a powerful speech as she talked about her experience as a bad dream. She urged the audience to make dreams come true for many of the visually handicapped in India.

The event was highly successful; it was sold out a week ahead of the show and raised $144,000 in donations at the event exceeding the target. This was accomplished by the pledges and donations along with $50, 000 in matching funds from Harshad Patel aka Harshad Uka from Irvine, California. In addition to matching dollars at the event, Harshad Patel also became a "partner-in service" by providing an additional $100,000 after he was impressed by the vision and dedication of the Sankara Eye Foundation.

Another "partner-in-service" was CLiPS, an organization with a mission to give back to Charotar in Gujarat, their community of origin. CLiPS joined SEF and raised funds of $100,000 for the Gujarat hospital, which is located in the heart of Charotar district of Gujarat. Once built, this hospital will be a 225 bed hospital and will do 20,000 free surgeries annually.

The target date for the Gujarat Hospital to be up and running is mid 2008. The total cost of the hospital will be 2.5 million, out of which 1.7 million has already been collected in cash and pledges. With dedicated volunteers, SEF seems well along the path to their mission of Vision 2020 by 2020.