In this webinar, discussed the concept of Homeopathy and its unique approach towards building health. We talked about different aspects that affect immunity as well as how we can boost immunity through our habits and lifestyles. During this unusual time, let’s figure out what we can do to make sure we are strong and healthy.

Video is available at

https://sewausa.org/Homeopathy

-

Madhavi Kasam is a Classical Homeopathic practitioner with over 20 years of experience in alternative healthcare. She received her Homeopathic degree BHMS, Bachelor of Homeopathic Medicine and Surgery, from JSPS Homeopathic Medical College under the direction of Health University of India. Along with her practice, Madhavi is also a member of the North American Society of Homeopaths (an organization that certifies and represents the professional homeopath in North America) and Indian Institute of Homeopathic Physicians. Mrs. Madhavi was conferred the prestigious Hind Rattan Award (Jewel of India) for her outstanding services, achievements and contributions.

To complement the Homeopathic practice, Madhavi is also well versed in home remedies, natural herbs, deep breathing exercises, yoga and meditation as a Patanjali Yogpeeth certified Yoga Teacher. She provides a unique combination of the different modalities to find a recommendation specific to each client.

Madhavi has worked with clients nationwide in the US, UK, and India. She is working from her office in Atlanta. Consultations can be done in person or over the phone.

Summary:  The coronavirus pandemic has disrupted our lives in major ways and many of us are confined to our homes. Doctors and health care workers are struggling and not able to find protective gears and enough resources to treat the patients. Once a patient is admitted, there is 7-14 days of stay in the hospital. Our healthcare systems are overburdened and many of us want to help but don’t know how. Is there something we can do as citizens in a community to play our part and help fight this pandemic? 

Video Link: https://sewausa.org/CovidCitizens

Speaker Profile: Dr Supriya Mannepalli , MD.  Is the Medical Director for Infectious Diseases , Northeast Georgia Health System. She completed her MBBS from Kasturba Medical college , Mangalore , India . Internal Medicine residency from University of Chattanooga , Tennessee. Infectious Diseases Fellowship from University of Florida , Jacksonville. Areas of interest  include Infection prevention and control, Antimicrobial stewardship. Hobbies include traveling.

A Brief Summary: Ayurveda is considered by many scholars to be the oldest healing science. In Sanskrit, Ayurveda means “The Science of Life.” Ayurvedic knowledge originated in India more than 5,000 years ago and is often called the “Mother of All Healing.” The principles of many of the natural healing systems now familiar in the West have their roots in Ayurveda, including Homeopathy and Polarity Therapy. In this webinar, we will discuss some immune-boosting tips with Ayurvedic daily regimen, diet, home remedies and herbs.

Video Link: https://sewausa.org/CovidAyurveda

The Speaker: Shri Nagesh Kasam is the founder and director of Amruth Ayurveda, an Ayurveda panchakarma center in Alpharetta, Georgia. He is an Ayurveda practitioner certified by the National Ayurvedic Medical Association (NAMA) and a Yoga Therapist certified by the International Association of Yoga Therapists (IAYT). He has been practicing Ayurveda and teaching yoga for more than ten years. 

A Brief Summary: COVID-19 has infected more than a quarter of a million worldwide and has caused more than 10 thousand deaths. This number is only increasing. In this first episode of the webinar series planned by Sewa International on COVID-19, Dr. Prasad Garimella, an expert in Pulmonary and Critical Care; explains (1) What it is, (2) Why is it important and (3) How to protect yourself and your loved ones from this Pandemic. The objective is to share relevant and practical advice based on the WHO and the CDC recommendations.

https://sewausa.org/COVIDAwareness

The Speaker: Dr. Prasad Garimella is Board certified in Internal Medicine, Pulmonary Medicine, Critical Care Medicine & Sleep Medicine. Well known and respected in our Atlanta communities, he is specially recognized in the management of Sleep Disorders and Diagnosis of Lung Cancer. The time and effort Dr. Garimella and his wife Dr. Madhuri Namuduri put in social service is exemplary.

Since January 2018, Dr. Garimella has been serving as the Chief of the Department of Medicine at Northside Gwinnett Hospital and Northside Duluth Hospital and is teaching medical students as an Associate Professor at Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine.

Dr Garimella was peer nominated to “Top Doctors in Atlanta” for 2019 and 2020 in Pulmonary Medicine.

Dr. Jagdish Sheth, Sewa International advisor and Atlanta based professor, was conferred the Padma Bhushan, for literature and education, on January 26, 2020. This is one of the highest accolades one can receive in India and it is no surprise the Dr. Sheth was able to accomplish it transcontinentally.

Dr. Sheth has taught and done research at the University of Southern California, University of Illinois, Columbia University, MIT, and Emory University. Professor Sheth is a the recipient of all four top awards given by the American Marketing Association: the Richard D. Irwin Distinguished Marketing Educator Award, the Charles Coolidge Parlin Award, the P.D. Converse Award for outstanding contributions to theory in marketing, and the William Wilkie Award for marketing for a better society. Dr. Sheth has also received over more than 30 awards as an expert in the field of marketing, consumer behavior, and emerging markets.

Dr. Sheth and his wife, Madhuri, are also well-known philanthropists. Through the Madhuri and Jagdish Sheth Foundation and the Sheth Family Foundation, they have given generously, both in terms of financial aid and advice, to over 50 community, academic, and healthcare organizations in Atlanta and around the world. Among those owing their gratitude is Sewa International, and it was no coincidence that Jagadish and Madhuri Sheth were honored with the “Outstanding Community Services” award at the Sewa International Atlanta Chapter Fundraiser the year before.

“We are excited and proud that our supporter, well-wisher, mentor, and adviser has been honored with this distinguished award by the Government of India,” said Viswanath Koppaka, National Marketing Director, Sewa International, and Atlanta Chapter volunteer.

Published on Indiacurrents

Sewa International - Volleyball Tournament 2019

Sewa sports group conducted Volleyball tournament 2019 on Saturday Dec 7^th, 2019.  

For the second year in a row, Sewa International conducted this tournament at the Atlanta Extreme Volleyball Club in Suwanee, GA. This tournament was conducted as a fundraiser for Sewa Family Services charitable cause.

Volleyball teams from sub-urban areas of Atlanta took part with full enthusiasm and great sportsmanship. The players were very competitive and gave it their best to make it a successful sporting event. Over all, there were 8 teams with 50+ players that took part in 15 closely contested games. One group had 1^st and 2^nd place decided by a tiny margin of 0.01 percentage point ratio.  

The audience enjoyed watching over 50+ individuals playing this event. The tournament attracted over 10 youth and adult volunteers all coming together to support this event for a noble cause.

Sewa would like to thank - Patel Brothers who was the main sponsor of this event.

Sewa extends its gratitude to all the players, volunteers, and sponsors for their volunteering and participation.

Mr. Viswanath Koppaka Ji inaugurated the tournament in a traditional Indian cultural way by lighting the divas and having Ganesh Vandana. Deepa Sharma, Rajiv Goel, Vimal Sharma, Divyaraj Singh, Prakash Srivastava, and Manoj Sharma facilitated this puja. Prakash Ji recorded the event and posted videos on Sewa Facebook page.

Mr. Manoj Sharma, the lead coordinator for the tournament welcomed all the participants and shared the details of the event, Sewa family services, and introduced all the coordinators. The audience was very receptive of the details shared about Sewa and the charitable cause.

Vishwanathji, the chief guest of the event provided insight into Sewa International’s community services in Metro Atlanta areas and the global charitable efforts/ initiatives of the organization. The audience gave several rounds of applause for the work Sewa organization was doing for the society. He thanked all the teams for their whole-hearted support and participation. Further, he requested them to continue their support.

This was followed by Mr. Manoj providing details on the structure of the tournament and the rules of the game. For easy reference; the printed details of the rules and schedules were put on the walls behind courts 1 and 2.

The players, umpires, scorers and volunteers helped keep the event on track by smoothly conducting their activities during each game. The event started on time at 9:00 AM and finished on time at 3:00 PM.

The winners and the runners-up team took pictures and videos with the rolling trophies awarded to them.

Below is the list of players from the Winners and Runners-up teams:

Winners: Team Atlanta

Players:

• Binish Antony
• Charles Sunny
• Jake Tarpley
• Bobby Tharakan
• Miller Thomas
• Roby Mathew
• Ajmal Nawabi

Runners-up: United VC

Players:

• Vamsi 
• Sashi
• Surya
• Bhanu
• Vamsee
• Dileep
• William

List of Coordinators

Deepa Sharma

Vimal Sharma

Divyaraj Singh

Manoj Sharma – Lead

List of Volunteers

Adult Volunteers – Rajiv Goel / Shraddha ji/ Garima ji/ Rashmita Tiwari .

Youth Volunteer – Arav Sharma/ Aditi Satghare / Mukul / Shreya / Ranjana

Apart from that there were many impromptu volunteers who helped in conducting the games on the day.

Pictures

Sewa Summer Internship 2019 Report – Week 2 through 3

   Sewa International, Atlanta chapter is running summer internship for high schools. We have 11 interns for tutoring classes for Bhutanese community in Decatur and 7 interns for Stone Mountain High School survey where we want to start Sewa leaning center. Please find the attached report. Also, There are a few pictures and videos that we have shared on Sewa Facebook page. 

Brief Report

   The internship has been going very well for all the interns. The group of interns responsible for tutoring kids from the Bhutanese have been getting a steady attendance each day. The students are primarily from elementary school with a proportion of them being from middle school as well. There are two locations for the tutoring project – one at the English Oaks Apartment and the other at the Carriage Oaks Apartment. Overall there has been a steady and healthy attendance of 25 elementary and middle school children who are being mentored by eleven interns.

        

Figure. Interns involved in the Bhutanese Community Tutoring Project

The interns in the Survey Project which is being carried out in collaboration with Stone Mountain High School is also moving into an advanced phase. The questionnaire design has been completed. The process being highly technical – it took five iterations to get the questionnaire right and getting approved by the principal of Stone Mountain High School. The interns did a lot of research and successfully designed the survey under the guidance of volunteers from Sewa. Plans are being made to effectively start the process of data collection.

The interns have also come up with a plan for a field for the participants at Fernbank Science Center. Appropriate plans are being made for the logistics of the entire process. Successive reports on the internship will provide descriptions in detail as and when the process moves forward.

Sewa Summer Internship 2019 Report – Week 1

After a long process of recruiting – online registration followed by telephonic interviews - the Summer Internship 2019 with Sewa International (Atlanta Chapter) started during second week of June 2019 as scheduled. The interns were broadly divided into two categories – one group responsible for tutoring kids from the Bhutanese community in the Clarkston area of Georgia and the other group responsible for a survey that has been undertaken by Sewa in collaboration with Stone Mountain High School. This year the internship program has been broadened from Sewa’s perspective in that we are also working with Stone Mountain High School to conduct a survey which aims to understand the perspective of students and their guardians/parents on what services the school can incorporate in order to meet multiple objectives – increase graduation rate, make parents get involved in the students’ academic activities, and last but not the least, prepare students for after-school life.

In between the process of recruiting interns and the actual internship, Sewa conducted multiple rounds of conference calls with the interns and their parents. In addition, Sewa also conducted a face-to-face meeting with the interns and their parents, followed by an Orientation Program the weekend before the start of the internship program, which was also attended by the principal of Stone Mountain High School, Dr. Wislene John. The objectives of all these activities with the interns (and their parents) were to get them on board, get them to understand the internship process, what they are expected to deliver and also to be sensitive to what their expectations are from the internship.

Figure 1. Meeting between Sewa volunteers and interns’ parents

It needs to be mentioned here that the ground work for both the projects of the internship program started as early as mid-May. The volunteers of Sewa visited the different apartments where the Bhutanese community reside and also met with the principal of Stone Mountain High School. While visiting the apartments, the volunteers had completed the first round of on-boarding process for the parents of the Bhutanese kids, talking with them, explaining the benefits their kids would have by attending the tutoring program and also finalizing a common place where the interns could gather the kids and tutor them. The volunteers of Sewa also completed multiple rounds of meeting with the representatives and the principal of Stone Mountain High School to explain how Sewa could help them meet their objectives (for which they would probably had to otherwise hire an external agency) and to gather the survey requirements.

Figure 2. Orientation Program: Sewa volunteers, interns with the principal of Stone Mountain High School, Dr. Wislene John

On the first day of the internship, the interns arrived at designated locations at designated times. This was followed by going door-to-door to recruit kids. The process involved explaining how Sewa is working on providing free tutoring classes to kids from the Bhutanese community and how it would benefit them. Overall, it was a great turnout - with 20 and 7 kids turning up, respectively at the two locations– almost all of them students from elementary schools, with varied backgrounds, including but not limited To Nepalese, Bhutanese, and Burmese. They were given lessons on spellings and Math. This was followed by playing games. It was a fun-filled experience for the interns with most of them learning a lot – especially on how to be patient and how to deal with kids. The second day also turned up to be quite fruitful for the interns and the kids, with most of the kids turning up from the first day and also additional ones. During both the days, volunteers from Sewa were physically present at the locations to guide the interns.

Figure 3. Interns demonstrating a science experiment to kids

The other group of interns – who are working with on the survey project have mostly been working remotely till now. The first stage of the project involves designing the survey questionnaire – a highly technical job. The questionnaire needs to have the ability to address all the objectives, have reliability and validity, and last but not the least, should not be too long or short. The work on designing the questionnaire continued for two weeks – it started the week prior to the actual internship program and continued till the first week. Overall, there were four iterations before being sent to the principal of Stone Mountain High School for approval. While we wait for the approval, the group is working on planning the process of data collection.

In summary, the program leading up to and including the first week was a great learning experience for the interns. It goes without saying that they are doing their best in furthering their own interests and also Sewa’s in empowering the Bhutanese community in the US as a whole, and the Atlanta chapter in particular.

Plan for Week 2:

• 1.       Bhutanese community tutoring project – continue the process of retaining and recruiting more kids, and tutoring
• 2.       Survey project – plan on visiting neighborhoods around Stone Mountain High School to collect responses

Sewa International in collaboration with Life south did blood drive in the neighborhood of Blackstone community, Cumming ,GA on the 2nd of June from 11 am till 5 pm. As always we got a great support from the community and managed to register 18 donors and were able to collect blood from 13 donors. That means this blood drive can save upto 39 local lives.

In 2018, blood drive in the same neighborhood saved up to 189 lives, thanks to the 63 donors. We have 2 more drives planned in 2019 in the same community. Apart from this our young high school volunteer Ananya Lohar is working with LifeSouth to schedule more drives in coming up months.

Photos available at Blood Drive - Jun 2019

Chess Mates Tournament 2019

Sewa sports group conducted Chess Mates tournament on Sunday, March 31st, 2019.

The tournament was conducted as a fundraiser for Sewa’s Family services initiative.

It was conducted for the very first time, got a very good response from Chess enthusiasts of Atlanta area. About 60 participated in various tournament categories viz. Unrated(open), Rated (U500, U1000)

The tournament also attracted about 10 youth and adult volunteers all coming together to support this event for a noble cause.

Sewa would like to thank

- Chesstronics for giving the location at reasonable price.

Sewa extends its gratitude to all the players, volunteers and sponsors for the enthusiastic participation in this event.

The tournament was inaugurated by Mrs. Deepa Luthra in a customary way with Ganesh Vandana. Mr, Nishanth Trivedi (Tournament Lead Coordinator) welcomed all the participants to the tournament and informed about the rules of the game along with Suriya Kopula the tournament director. It was followed by an address by the chief guest of the event Deepa Luthra who provided insight into Sewa International’s Family services in Metro Atlanta. Mr. Vijai shared his vision as sports coordinator of Atlanta chapter. Deepa Sharma and Prakash Srivastava helped remotely with volunteer and player registrations and website marketing.

Below is the list of Winners and Runners-up in each category:

Unrated –

Winner – Ramchandra Nadar

Runners-up 1 – Aashray Arun

Runners-up 2 – Praneeth Bhat

Runners-up 3 – Shuvam Rath

Runners-up 4 – Dhruva Devabhaktuni

Rated U500 –

Winner – Chenxiang Xia

Runners-up 1 – Avyan Yeluguri

Runners-up 2 – Keshav Prasad

Runners-up 3 – Sai Neel Maddu

Runners-up 4 – Adithya Ravichandran

Rated U1000 –

Winner – Alex Madden

Runners-up 1 – Troy Madden

Runners-up 2 – Haley Long

Runners-up 3 – Max Sun

Runners-up 4 – Preetham Thelluri

List of Volunteers

Adult Volunteers – Nishant Trivedi / Prakash Srivastava / Nate Natesan / Garima Saini / Jyoti Mukka /Nagender Yamsani/ Sandeep Parashar / Deepa Sharma

Youth Volunteer – Saketh / Mukul / Siddharth / Rahul /Aishwarya / Haarika

Apart from that there were many impromptu volunteers who helped with conduct of the games on the day.

Click for Photos