- By AANA Executive Board

With great pleasure, we would like to introduce the couple behind AANA's new website to all of you. Mr. Prantor Bora and Mrs. Geeti Das from Minneapolis are the husband and wife team who have designed and created our new home for AANA.
   
It took only a phone call to Geeti to invite them to offer their service to the community. In spite of their busy schedule of professional careers and two small children, they offered enormous amount of time and effort doing research in collecting data, materials, pictures and all other necessary information in building this beautiful home for AANA.

It has been said, "Duty makes us do things well, but love makes us do things beautifully" (Zig Ziglar). Please see for yourselves that the couple has put great deal of love and care in this selfless deed of kindness - which will benefit our community for a long time to come. It is not just a 'one time, and you're done' project. They have been updating the website periodically adding new materials. It is always a pleasure to visit the website and find new information, news, or new pictures. All of us truly appreciate their ongoing work.

In front of Ganesh Temple, Guwahati  - Geeti with her husband, Prantor Bora  and children - Nimisha and Taj

A hug from my kids after  performing a Bihu dance at  the Assam Convention  Chicago, 2011

   We welcome all of you to visit our home www.AANAhome.org with your family and friends from time to time.  We will be looking forward for your feedback. Please join us in giving a big hand to Geeti and Prantor. Here they are, in their own words:

Let the journey to AANA’s home stay beautiful and meaningful to all…
Prantor and I live in Apple Valley, a suburb of the greater Twin Cities area (Minneapolis/ St Paul). We have two children, 6 year old daughter, Nimisha, and 2 year old son, Taj. Prantor is a Technical Architect/Sr. Development Manager at Oracle. I am a Business Systems Consultant at Wells Fargo.
Our home town is the beautiful city of Guwahati, Assam. Prantor completed his Computer Engineering from REC Kurukshetra, and I completed my Masters Degree (Political Science) from Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi. We started our career in New Delhi, and shortly after that moved to the United States in 1999. We have been a resident of Minnesota ever since, and love experiencing everything the “Land of 10,000 Lakes” has to offer.  
Nimisha, a 1st grader at the Cedar Park Elementary School, loves to read and write stories, and singing Assamese songs. She enjoys soccer, ice skating and playing the piano too. Our little preschooler, Taj is all into cars and trucks at the moment.
I enjoy web and graphics designing as a passion. Prantor is all into technology/gadgets and loves to go out and play. Our family, together with our extended family of the Assamese Minnesotans living here, Love, Live and Celebrate the festive spirit throughout the year.

It has been a great learning and pleasant experience designing /developing a brand new website for the Assam Association of North America. www.AANAhome.org is invaluable, and we are enjoying our time dedicating it for our community. We look forward to seeing you more at the web, and will strive to make your stay a pleasant and memorable one.

Wishing all readers and friends a happy browsing!
- Geeti Das
(on behalf of Prantor and the AANA IT Team)
www.AANAhome.org

AFNA wishes everyone a Happy Rongali Bihu season. For everyone who donated earlier in our 2012 calendar campaign, we hope that the scenes and holiday listings of Assam in the calendar are helping a little to remind you of our beautiful state during this special season.

AFNA continues to make good progress on our existing initiatives outlined in the previous newsletter. We have also taken on some new initiatives since then, which we describe below.
Supporting "Where the Brahmaputra meets the Mississipi" (WBMM):  This was a fundraising event held in Richfield, Minnesota on April 7th 2012, organized by three AFNA volunteers Mili Dutta, Monika Kataky, and Ankita Deka, with the help of other volunteers and members of various communities. The program was a presentation of Indian classical and modern dance with North American music and dance. It was symbolizing the confluence of cultures of the mystical east and the vibrant west. The objective was to raise $10,000 through ticket sales, silent auctions, and donations for the benefit of two NGOs in Assam, namely RVGN (Rashtriya Gramin Vikas Nidhi) and SPADE (Society for Promotion of Appropriate Development Efforts). The details of this event are available at http://www.wbmm-mn.com/. The coordinator for this partnership with the WBMM team was AFNA volunteer, Krishanu Kaushik.

Solar Light: Power to the People: In our own lives, we take modern lighting for granted for basics like children's education (study at night), healthcare, and safety. "Solar Light: Power to the People" is a new AFNA project to bring a little bit of reliable lighting to poor people in a remote region in Assam, namely the the Garbhanga forest near Pamohi outside Guwahati. Garbhanga does not have electricity from the grid and is unlikely to do so in the near future. To make a dent on this problem, AFNA submitted this project proposal in March 2012 to Global Giving (www.globalgiving.org), a highly respected organization which attracts donors globally for humanitarian projects across the world. After a detailed due diligence process, Global Giving accepted the proposal and set a goal to raise $4,000 from 50 unique donors by April 30th to make this project permanent on their site. Due to the hard work of many AFNA volunteers and generous contributions from many donors within and outside the Assamese community, this milestone was achieved before the deadline! As a permanent entry on Global Giving,  "Solar Light: Power to the People" will now have sustained attention from prospective donors all over the world for many years and help us provide this much needed lighting to the people of Garbhanga. The project was led by AFNA volunteers, Ankur Bora and Pinky Pradhan. 

Mid west tornado relief: In March this year, a tornado wreaked havoc in the mid-western states of the USA. As a token of support to the victims, AFNA did a fund drive and is donating $1000 to the American Red Cross for relief work. The coordinator for this fund drive was AFNA volunteer, Debojit Bora.