Exchange Visitor Alumni Association Elects a New President and Welcomes Award Winning New Member

Left to Right: Mr. Gitesh Joshi, Mr. Bijoy Thangaraj, Mr. Ramesh, CAO Ragini Gupta and and Mr. Aurovind after receiving their prizes.

Over 60 alumni of U.S. government sponsored exchange programs elected Mr. Somashekar of the National Law School of India University to lead their alumni association -- the Exchange Visitor Alumni Association or “EVAA” – in Bangalore on August 28.  Each year, EVAA holds a reception, annual meeting and election in a different South Indian city, reaching out to the alumni in that region.  Mr. Somashekar, who participated in an exchange program on “U.S. Trade Policy” in 2009, took over as President from Ms. Janaki Murali, a Group Leader at Infosys Technologies.  He promised to use EVAA to highlight existing Indo-U.S. partnerships and seek new ground for additional collaboration in the areas of environmental protection, combating climate change, and increasing access to quality education, among others.  He urged the exchange grantees present to help EVAA achieve these goals.  Two recent exchange alumni, Mr. Nassif Muhammed Ali,  a student at Farook College in Calicut who participated in a youth leadership program, and Ms. Kanchan Kaur, Vice Dean of the Indian Institute of Journalism and New Media in Bangalore who attended a program on Journalism and Digital Media, spoke briefly about the impact of their exchange experience both professionally and personally.  Another alumnus, Major General (Retd) Paul who participated in a program on “Disaster Management” in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks in the U.S., presented a book written by him to Consul for Cultural Affairs, Ms. Ragini Gupta, in which he acknowledges the tremendous value of his exchange experience in the U.S.  

On the same evening, Ms. Gupta welcomed a new member of EVAA to the group – Mr. Bijoy Thangaraj, one of the four world-wide winners of the online video contest “My Culture + Your Culture = ?”  Mr. Thangaraj will travel to the U.S. in September 2009 on a 3-week U.S. government sponsored exchange program on “Promoting Tolerance Through the Arts.”  The video contest was organized by the U.S. State Department and co-sponsored by the Adobe Youth Voices initiative of the Adobe Foundation to encourage cross-cultural community building and mutual understanding via the Web and social media. Mr. Thangaraj’s winning video entry entitled “My Culture + Your Culture = World of Wonder” competed against hundreds of entries from all over the world.  Mr. Thangaraj and his 5 co-collaborators also received Adobe Creative CS4 Production Premium software packages as gifts.

To receive information about future Consulate programs e-mail ChennaiPASprograms@state.gov