Raising Funds for Udayan and Parivaar through my runs in Dec 2012 and Jan 2012

Over the past seven years, I have raised funds for Parivaar, an organization for underprivileged kids, based out of Calcutta, each time I have participated in the Mumbai Marathon's events. This year, I am raising funds for another organization as well. The organization is Udayan (<-click on this link for info on Udayan)

Some of you who know about Parivaar or Udayan, can skip most of this post and write to me about your willingness to contribute. If you want to contribute to Udayan, just click the link to the blog post on Udayan that I have linked to, in the first paragraph of this email. Or if you are in an even greater hurry, click on this or this for contributing to Parivaar. For each of the last few years, we have managed to raise about enough funds to fund around half a dozen kids at Parivaar for a year. In fact last year due to timely contributions from some of you that I mail and others that support Parivaar, Parivaar managed about 50% more funds in Give India's challenge. That was really encouraging. Thanks to all those who were involved.

For the rest, please read on.

I am running in the California International Marathon on 2nd Dec 2012. I am also running in Mumbai on 20th Jan 2013 in the half marathon. Through my runs, I want to raise funds for Udayan and Parivaar. While Udayan works to support the children of leprosy patients, Parivaar works for total rehabilitation of highly vulnerable children.

Parivaar was started by Vinayak Lohani, a friend of mine from Infosys days. You could read about them at the url above and also at my blog
http://dhammo.blogspot.com/2005/04/parivaar.html

for my personal take on them.

I expect that each of you can contribute INR 1K or more. But if you want to contribute less than 1k or even nothing at all, it is still fine since this is a request for voluntary donations.

I need you to reply to me so that I can get an idea of how much I can raise.

If you would like to contribute to Udayan, please check this link. In about a week's time or so, Udayan's Give India page should also be up.

If you would like to contribute to Parivaar, please let Vinayak (vinayak@parivaar.org) know your postal addresses once you have contributed. The receipts will be sent directly to you by Parivaar. Some of you may have already received emails from Parivaar for the ongoing Give India challenge.

Just in case you are wondering, I intend to contribute to both Parivaar and Udayan this year.

Also, please feel free to forward this to friends of yours who would be interested in contributing to such a cause and cc me on your mails.

Thank you