Children’s School As our children grow, they learn the values and traditions of American culture and society. However, they need to learn Nepali culture and value as well to keep their heritage, identity and of course to learn the value system Nepali culture offers. Nepal is a country rich in its heritage, culture and tradition. A knowledge of Nepali culture and values enriches their identification as Nepali-American. It is the responsibility of parents and adults to create an opportunity for them to see and learn. Both activities at home and various social, religious, cultural and other programs organized by NAC offer them glimpses of the value of our traditions. It is never enough and more programs to help them see, participate and learn are necessary. Understanding this fact, NAC started Nepali Language School from October 2011. Children participate in this program, which consists of prayer as done in Nepal, learn to read and write Nepali, story readings, cultural discussions, etc. Children attending this program are encouraged to write for the Chicago Chautari Times newsletter. Currently, the active group of Nepali women in Chicago identified themselves as Lali Gurans are undertaking this responsibility and NAC extends necessary support for it.

Virtual Musical Talent Show You may have attended the live program streamed directly through zoom and Nepali American Center (NAC) Facebook on Saturday July 11 from 7PM. This first of a kind unique entertaining event was dubbed as “Virtual Musical Talent Show”. This event needed both the hard work of many volunteers for several months with clear insights to navigate it to an exhilarating finish. NAC senior vice president Ankur Sharma is a very dynamic community leader possessed with multi-talents. Like in the past, he again took the responsibility to lead this effort. He assembled a strong team of volunteers and performers to bring a fully online live entertaining and informative presentation . The team took over the charge of this first-in kind e event and navigated it from a sketchy start to surprisingly unprecedented success. The  primary focus of the show was to identify and bring forward  distinct talents present among the community members. The  secondary objective was to try to engage everyone  during  pandemic COVID-19. A list of features presented in this event were: Talent shows consisted of four age groups: Under Five, Six to Ten, Eleven to Fifteen and Above Fifteen. A total of 68 quality entries were submitted.. Recognition of winners and gift cards to the first, second and third in each of the category  Songs from popular singer Nalina Chitrakar and local talents Shreya Thapa (Iowa), Niraj Shrestha, Jagadish Yadav and Biswas Pradhan from Chicago and Sudin Amatya (DC) NAC’s yearly Chicago Chautari Times (April 2019 – March 2020) recognizing all the participants  Recognition with presentation of gift card to High School and College Graduates  2020 Interested participants could submit their interest in different categories such as:  songs, dance, poem reciting, and others. These decisions were communicated via various media including viber group messaging, email, Facebook and NAC website. We received 68 quality entries, 10 submissions were in the Under Five category, 32 submissions in the Six to Ten category, 10 submissions in the Eleven to Fifteen category and 16 submissions in the Above Fifteen categories. There were participants from Chicago, different parts of the USA as well as Nepal.  All submissions were obtained using online entries. Everyone in the community was requested to vote  her choice online with each person to vote once to any of the submissions. NAC audience as per the request and the order of the ranks of the talents in each category were decided by counting the final number of votes received for each submission. The first, second and third winners in each category were awarded e-Giftcards. All the entries except the Above Fifteen category were also given consolation eGift cards. NAC is happy to inform that nearly 4000 audiences across the globe attended the show. Hopefully, all those who watched it found it extraordinarily entertaining.  To commemorate this one of a kind event, a team of volunteers also published a special souvenir named “NAC Covid-19 Yearbook”. Our effort  was to make this memoir publication reflective of how  all of us handled the challenging situation of COVID pandemic. We strongly feel that this will be very  interesting to our  children and grandchildren in the years to come. There were greeting messages from all our supporters  as the main part of this Yearbook. It also included descriptions of various NAC’s activities since its inception. The name of the entries and winner from each category is as below. Age group 5 and below: Age group 6 to 10: Age group 11-15: Age group 16+:

NAC YearBook 2020 (COVID -19 EDITION) While conducting various virtual programs via zoom and Facebook during the Covid19 pandemic, NAC also successfully completed one kind of entertaining program dubbed “Talent Show” featuring popular singers, artists and most importantly giving a platform for hidden talents that exist within the community. Detailed information of this is presented separately in this website, this event spurred us to publish the “NAC Yearbook 2020 Covid-19 Edition.” This attractive memorabilia featured messages from NAC members, articles related to NAC activities of the past, family photos, list of Nepalese businesses in Chicagoland, and many more. The Yearbook team has conducted  painstakingly hard work to design and develop a fascinating appearance of the Yearbook 2020 with so many families featured in it with their beautiful smiling pictures and brilliant writings. To put more flavor in it, many of the NAC community activities covering its entire history were also included in  the year book. It also featured  a full description of a business model on how such a physical facility  could be built from all our combined effort.  . It also featured other interesting articles written by our community members detailing how they navigated their life journey during COVID 19 pandemic. We never imagined the publication would look aesthetically so beautiful. A number of copies were printed and distributed to the contributing families. Its electronic version is available at the following location: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1uISNl_II8Tym55Fa5tR0syCWk0r7UrLp/view?usp=sharing

Cooperation and Coordination with existing Nepali social organizations and groups The following are various Nepali social organizations and clubs in Chicago. Their goal is to offer one or more types of services to some or all members in the community. A person may be affiliated with one or more of these organizations. Sometimes, a member may put sole trust in a particular one and in some cases in several of them. It is therefore imperative for us to have a coordination body for a number of reasons. Communication plays a vital role to conduct any program or function properly. At the same time, it is also necessary to avoid possible conflicting events across the groups as much as possible. In addition, it is very important to have strong unity among us so that we can work properly to satisfy the common interests of all of us. Nepali American Center Chicago Nepali Friendship Society NRNA NCC IL Chapter Newa American Dabu Chicagoland Tharu Society Chicago Nepali Terain Society International Nepali Literary Society Chicago Chapter Lali Gurans Nepali American Women American Society of Nepalese Engineers Chicago Chapter Himalayan Rhino Club Dafne Sports Club Association of Nepalese in Midwest America Asha Picturesque (Media representative) To fulfill these objectives, all these organizations and groups have formed a council with one person as a member, typically the president of the organization, representing the group in this council. Meetings and communications among these members are conducted as per the need basis and necessary communications are disseminated by all the group members so that no members in the community are left with notification of the event or information necessary to be communicated. These groups communicate the messages via email, messenger or viber groups, Facebooks and other channels including phones in some cases to their members. This group conducts its activity with total transparency to everyone and every member across the system. It is very humbling that the members have developed very cordial relationships and respect with each other and thereby recognizing the importance of each of the organizations and clubs. The common view of these members is to work for a harmonious environment for greater unity rather than compel everyone into one single organization to serve the community more effectively. They believe that each group or organization  is more capable to facilitate different functions and events according to their goals as they specialize better in understanding their own needs better  than trying to carry out every kind of function through the executive committee of one single organization. Such a setup has the advantage  of fostering mutual respect and understanding and creating a harmonious environment to benefit everyone. Furthermore, having several organizations to cover various types of events and functions provide added strength of having more volunteers required to work on a common goal when needed. This is also true when we have to set up activities at different locations as we Nepalese are living far and wide according to our interest, jobs, affordability, etc. Many of the members either by virtue of interest in multiple groups activities or for other reasons, participate in different functions organized by different groups at different locations. Certainly, this is an ideal concept, and we are very fortunate in Chicago that we rarely see any conflicts and frictions arising among the members in the community. We believe that the reasons behind such a result is from the coordination and cooperation with equal respect to each and every organizations and groups irrespective of member size in one or other organization or groups. We also spell this motto at every opportunity when we have to conduct an event jointly. No feeling of superiority is permitted to foster in any function, and everything works properly. We have participated to work in this manner for a long time. To give few examples of activities of more recent times are (1) Offer relief service to the community member if affected by Covid19 infections, (2) Help in the first Nepalese Embassy Consular Service in Chicago and (3) Participate and raise funds in welcoming Nepal’s national hero Mahabir Pun. Nepali American Center feels very proud to take a central role in bringing together all the organizations and groups together and forming such a council. NAC also believes that creating such an environment has certainly caused greater cooperation and friendships among many of us. We believe, this unity will be very important for all of us to raise funds and establish a common Nepalese facility in Chicago that can house a temple for religious purpose, conducting cultural activities for common joy and use it as a platform for our youths to mingle with each other and develop strong friendships among themselves so that we can handover the baton of preserving our identity and cultural heritage in the future.  

Nepali-origin Bhutanese refugees, have the same background such as culture, tradition, language  as the Nepali-Americans already residing in Chicago, US. When the Nepali-origin Bhutanese arrived fresh around the Chicagoland region with unknown culture and system, we felt very close to them and supported them based on their individual requirements.  Many refugees as well as NAC members understood their initial challenges in a new culture including challenges in communicating with native speakers and other inconveniences like economic challenges. Therefore, NAC volunteers in Chicago started offering different kinds of support and advice to the Nepali-Bhutanese refugees. Schooling to children, translation service to agencies, computers, training for driving licenses, etc. are among the types of help provided. As the refugees  settled and became familiar with the new environment, they started helping themselves and their fellow newcomers. This fostered relationships among all of us and provided directions for addressing common needs and challenges while settling in a new country. One notable activity NAC undertook was to provide a working computer to help the newly settled refugees.. Many NAC community members had spare usable computers lying in their home while others reached out to their employers to see if they could help by providing some computers to the refugees.Computer savvy skilled NAC members joined their hands to assemble and refurbish the computers. These computers were distributed appropriately to the needy ones along with basic training for operating the computers and preparing resumes and letters.