Juniors sing, dance, jump rope for charities
By: Shreya Ramamurthy
Posted September 10
In the midst of all the summer work and camps, a group of 18 Saint Francis juniors, led by Shreya Ramamurthy, Naeha Haridasa and Shravan Grandhi, worked tirelessly to pull together a charity performance to benefit two deserving organizations, the Madhuram Narayanan Centre and Operation Smile.
The Madhuram Narayanan Centre is a small school, based in India, that provides services to children with mental and physical disabilities. Operation Smile is an international organization that raises money to provide free surgeries to children suffering from cleft lip and cleft palates, along with other facial deformities.
In addition to the three leaders, the group consisted of Sarah Nishikawa, Sana Allam, Priyanka Panda, Anuk Burli, Chandrabh Akireddy, Kayla Hipp, Nimitt Tripathy, Nimish Saxena, Daniel Lai, Stephanie Nguyen, Mara Midiere, Premikka Pandian, Shweta Tatkar. The diverse performance included singing, dancing, and even a special jump rope performance by Kayla Hipp and her team, the Sol Jumpers. Naeha commented, "It's really spectacular when we all pool together our talents for a cause!"
The entire performance took a month to coordinate. "It was a really great experience for me, especially working with some of my best friends and giving all the money to charity," said Shreya.
At the end of their fundraising efforts, the team collected over $6000! After paying for all the expenses for the performance, each charity ended up with $2700 each. The Madhuram Narayanan Centre will use the money for a year's worth of Project Sambhavam, which is a project on experiential learning. Children are taken to parks, malls and places of interest to develop skills in practical situations. Operation Smile will use the money to pay for at least 10 surgeries. Any extra money will also go to buying medical supplies, as well as toys for the kids.
"To summarize the experience, it really taught us how to form an idea and really take it through all the way. From marketing, to organizing the performers, to buying all the food and decorations, it really was a learning experience," said Shreya and Naeha.
