We are proud to announce that we are launching our newsletter News@Anand. The quarterly newsletter will aim to provide information about our projects, the impact we are creating in India and our fund-raising events. Anand Charity values transparency and periodic communication with our donors and we hope that we will be able to achieve both through our newsletter. A million thanks to all our volunteers who have put a lot of effort in creating the newsletter.

Please click here to read the first edition of our newsletter.

We welcome your questions and comments about our newsletter and about our work in general. Please feel free to contact us at contact@anandcharity.org. One of our volunteers will personally respond to you.

Thank you for your support to Anand Charity and we look forward to your continued support.

Anand Charity was present at Bay Area Telugu Association’s 2008 Ugadi Festival yesterday. A big thanks to BATA for letting us setting up a booth and helping us spread the word to the Bay Area Telugu community. We had the opportunity to talk to a lot of people about Anand Charity and let them know about the good work we are doing. We will continue to take part in such events in the Bay Area in the coming months.

A big thanks to our volunteers who were present at the booths and also to the volunteers who worked behind the scenes to get everything ready for the show.

If you are interested in putting up a booth in your town at any Indian festival or gathering in your community, please contact us.

Here are some photographs from yesterday’s event (Slideshow on zoom.in):

Anand Charity relies on the efforts of our volunteers and recently, we have received a lot of help from one such volunteer, Karthik SS. Karthik runs his own ad agency in India - Balyhoo! (http://www.balyhoo.in). He is really talented and has designed our tennis tournament flyer and banner for our publicity events. You can see his amazing designs below.

We have made public our 2007 Annual report on our website. 2007 was an important year for us where we accomplished significant groundwork. Here are the key accomplishments for 2007 :

• Anand Charity incorporated in State of California (January)
• First meeting of Board of Directors held and the officers (President, Secretary and Treasurer) elected (March)
• Anand Charity granted 501(c)(3) federal tax exemption status (June)
• Anand Charity granted California State tax exemption (September)
• Invited grant proposals from charity organizations in India (December)
• Recruited more volunteers

2008 has been a great year so far with big steps forward. We are excited!