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Volunteers

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On a more serious note -
I will talk only about educational opportunities in this post.
I divide Brahmins into three categories -
* Upper class - Businessmen, Professionals, general "Panakkara" ;-)
* Middle class - Officegoers, public sector workers, small business
* Economically weaker class - Humble jobs, archakas, vadiyars etc.


For Upper Class children, education is not a problem. They will go to any private college outside TN or buy a management seat right in Madras itself.
Good luck my friends and all I ask is remember your people and help them when you make it big.


Middle class children have their challenges. They are not rich enough to buy seats in TN.Reservation makes it very hard to get a seat on merit. ( I have heard from my cousins that even getting 94% of marks is not enough !)
At the same time their parents have told them that education is the only future for them. These children get confused and disappointed in life. They do some BSc etc and try to get some quasij- white collar job ( sales rep, marketing rep, etc )



Economically weaker class children - hardest hit. Their parents are busy trying to provide a basic living for their kids. They can hardly afford even the basic education. These are kids of cooks, archakas and vadiyars who are simply unable to stand up to the challenges of the modern world.
They generally take up their parents' professions but
those professions are no longer important in today's world.

Before I move any further , Now I need to ask you:
Is there anything wrong with this categorization ?
I welcome people who wish to correct me !
 
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Answer to Gurumurthy

Guru,

Both ideas and persons should be important to us because it is we as humans who are affected by these ideas.

1) No matter how badly some communities treat you, try to win them over with reason and trust. The effort is your hands but the reward is not. But you have to make the effort - continuously. I wrote a long passage about how the backward communities have this power today because the forward communities fought for them in the past. Tell them we are all in this thing called life together. They may ignore you at first but since it is the truth - it will always prevail.

2) Be excellent in whatever you do.

3) Education is our salvation. Be passionate about learning not only while you are in school or college but throughout your life.

4) Have dignity of labor. If you have to do menial jobs to make some extra money to put you through college, be willing to do it.

5) Give moral and material support to your compatriots from your community - so they are not affected by silly things shown in movies etc.
If some movies depict Brahmins in poor light just don't see them.

6) Read inspirational books about and by people like Gandhi and Nehru.

7) Aspire to be the best in the world - not only TN.

8) Have faith in yourself and believe in your greatness.

9) Be ready to ready to migrate to more hospitable surrounding if TN is getting too ugly. I can tell you as a Bangalorean that Bangalore has never been and will never be as bad as I hear TN is.

SV
 
Hi Souwmya, another member who wants to be very active is also in Houston , his member name is thodi, he also has lot of contacts in Houston , it would be great if ur in touch on email / phone
 
I live in chennai and the pressing need today is two things in the same order. We need to contact forward communities across the Nation and send good lawyers to make sure Supreme Court provides the right verdict in the Tamilnadu govt case for 69% reservation . Ram Jethmalini is fighting the govt's cause ( can someone reason out to him ) and we dont seem to have anyone for our cause . If we lose this case we lose our future as all states will increase reservation to may be 80% , we need to only commit suicides
This word needs to spread to all associations across the country

The second need is money to educate poor brahmin children , sons of archakas , vadhyars etc and money to create a portal in this site for giving good information on education for brahmin children
 
great to see the new infusion of interest and activity.

To continue with my earlier post

  • Middle class Brahmin kids are hard-pressed to find professional education seats. They have to settle for modest jobs and modest lifestyles as a consequence.
ACTION ITEM : They can be helped in two ways
  • By giving guidance - Not everyone knows that you can study Engineering at an afforable price in one of the dozens of Engineering colleges in and around Bangalore. Even those who know, may not be aware of which college is good and which courses are worth taking. ( you see some guys studying Polymer Engineering and struggling for jobs after graduating :nono: )
BASICALLY WE NEED OUR OWN CAREER COUNSELLING CENTER
  • By arranging funds for paying tuition. This can be a loan, guidance to finding a loan, or maybe establishing an NRI sponsor for an Engineering/Medical student.
Economically Weaker Brahmin kids:

These children may not find it possible to afford even the cheap seats in Bangalore ( for example ). Also, family circumstances may make it necessary for them to start working ASAP to help their family.

ACTION ITEM : They can be helped in these ways

  • Make them computer literate so that they can do SOMETHING with their lives. At the minimum - DATA ENTRY. Maximum - Programmer who can work in software careers. This is not hard or expensive. Programming will come easily to most Brahmins, this is something I have seen personally. You do not need to be educated in a high-brow convent to do programming.
  • Give them basic life counselling service - I am sure that they can be helped in many different ways, economical being only one of them. They should know that they can study part-time and improve their lot in life.
NEVER UNDERESTIMATE THE VALUE OF COUNSELLING AND GUIDANCE. GIVE PEOPLE A GOAL TO WORK TOWARDS AND THEY WILL AMAZE YOU WITH THEIR PERSISTENCE AND INGENUITY.
 
Subalaji -

We need a list of people in US who want to volunteer. If you look at a previous post of mine in the volunteer thread, there is an easy method to raise money through bank bonus ( basically ING bank will give you $ 35 to open a FREE account )

The question is - can we find 100 Tamil Brahmins in the US who can do this and raise $ 3500 at least as a beginning ? This will be good to get a basic community centre started....
 
No leader yet...

We still don't have a volunteer to take the lead. Subalaji sent his phone number which was switched off when I called. This won't do. If we cannot produce any leaders we cannot help our community. $3500 wont be a problem at all. I can personally raise this in 3-4 days. We need a business plan first deciding what we need the money for and an organization and method to disburse them.

SV
 
OK, Sv, we'll find someone. Let's keep looking. Subalaji will resume contact I am sure

BTW, have you seen Keralaiyers.com ? they seem to have their act together, especially when it comes to action initiatives.......
 
What about Silverfox ? I know he is in India ( chennai ? ) now.... maybe he can provide a solid leader on the ground for us.........
 
Contacts

Hi SV,

Not sure why u could not reach me , pls try again , my cell phone is normally 'ON' only, sometimes signal level goes up and down , and for once dont jump to conclusions quickly as we are here for a common cause and no point getting agitated ourselves.

I do not wish to provide my landline number openly but pls try again anytime before 11pm my time .

Regards
 
Before we decide on the responsibilities as to who will do what in Chennai ,( I can gather couple of more volunteers) , it is important to know what is that realistically we want to achieve in the next 3 months and then take it forward. It would be of great help if SV and others could collect as much funds and volunteers in USA and contacts . We will form a core team in chennai and start executing some actions once we decide on what needs to be done . I have sent my number to SV on email
 
Land line

Subalaji,

I tried your landline about 1 PM your time Sunday- no one picked up. Please send me your Cell no. and landline again to the private email box.

thx,

SV
 
Talk with Subalaji

Hi All,

I had a loooong conversation with Subalaji for more than an hour last night. I am delighted to report that he is simply awesome.

He identifies 3 main areas of concern and priority.

1) To combat the TN Lawsuit seeking tio extend reservation to beyond 50% all over India.

2) To form an Internet registry for Brahmins so they can come under the network of those who are trying to help them materially or with information and sources of help that can help them help themselves.

3) To focus on Education as the item that requires top priority attention.

To achieve these objectives, we both agreed that one professional will be employed full time supported by donations from some of us so that he can produce a Business Plan which analyzes the problems of Tamil Brahmins throughout the state of TN. Having a Business Plan enables us to have a validated and formalized basis on which we can ask individuals in India and abroad to donate funds. We will set progressive targets and we will have to show accountability and verifiability in achieving these
targets. Independent auditors of repute will be used to achieve the accountability concerns and this will be a part of our BP.

Subalaji has promised to come up with one such individual. Subalaji impressed me as a person of integrity and dedication. He is a young many with fire in his belly and with maturity beyond his years to boot.

I would like to request everyone to offer him full support.

SV
 
Funds

While I am alrready making many contacts aware of the TN situation - it would be best to solicit funds only if a presentable Business Plan is available. Without that we cannot even provide an answer to the question "what are these funds for and what do you hope to achieve?

SV





subalaji said:
Before we decide on the responsibilities as to who will do what in Chennai ,( I can gather couple of more volunteers) , it is important to know what is that realistically we want to achieve in the next 3 months and then take it forward. It would be of great help if SV and others could collect as much funds and volunteers in USA and contacts . We will form a core team in chennai and start executing some actions once we decide on what needs to be done . I have sent my number to SV on email
Click to expand...
 
Mr. Venu Sherman ( my father in law ) whose number is 91-9840733443 is willing to take up this responsibility long term . I will also check with him if he is the right person to prepare a business plan or outsource it to the right person . He retired as a State Bank of india officer and was Manager of the famous Music Academy in chennai until last year. He has extensive network of contacts in Chennai as well to get things done . I will keep all of u updated on how we are going to tackle the Business Plan to begin with , I will from now on call this as Execution Plan .

Vaylan and Trivikrama where r u based out of , can u give me ur contacts to me
 
Hi SV,

Sorry about the confusion. I did not say I was planning to call yesterday itself as I did not know when you were going to send me the number.

Let me call sometime today.

Rgds
Vaylan
 
What happened?

My simple suggestion was to place AD's in TB oriented magazines/newspapers to come to this web-site and register if they need help of any kind. After that I did not hear from anyone. Is anyone upto this simple task?

Success starts with simple steps. In business, success starts with cold calling to find out what people have to say about the problem you want to solve and being a good listener. If we cannot do this simple thing, how can we go on to doing bigger things?

One of the criticisms aimed at Brahmins is they all talk big about politics, government and a lot of theoretical concepts gained from reading newspapers and books - but cannot do simple tasks to do simple things. I hope we can prove the criticism wrong.

Alternatively, we should all do what we do best - look for employment wherever it is available and stop worrying that there are others who need help - because they will do the same and take care of themselves. Which is actually a good thing.


SV
 
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