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.

Virtual meetings for positive lifestyle during Covid19 Pandemic Apart from its regular activities, members of Nepali American Center (NAC)  started year 2020 with renewed fervor after successfully organizing Nepali Mela 2019, a historic event in Chicago. Its board members showed greater zeal for the need of accelerating activities in raising funds for building a long-cherished Nepalese (should we remove Nepalese?)  facility in Chicago. This new / rekindled vow dealt a serious impairment shortly after. As early as March 2020, the spread of Covid19 pandemic needed a national lockdown to safeguard the health and welfare of the people in the USA and abroad. Offices, business, educational institutions, transportations, and everything else were shut down. Our new year resolutions and other planned families’ activities encountered abrupt uncertainty. This also hindered all our daily routine life indefinitely. Many businesses started closing. People’s mobility came to a grinding halt, and they started panicking for daily supply of food and other household essentials goods. Shops selling daily consumer and household products began to have empty shelves as people began grabbing items wherever they could find. Everything became chaotic. Our only way of remaining in touch with community members was limited to phone calls and evolving pandemic news across the country and the world through TV and other media channels. We were constrained avoiding the crowds as much as possible even in walking out in the nature. All of us were perplexed with the fear and potential threats to life without any knowledge on how quickly the contagious virus may spread and infect. None of us feel any good with these restrictions and may never forget. Fortunately, how to deal with this situation to prevent from infection slowly started to emerge. Social distancing, use of masks, washing hands and minimizing exposers were advised by the scientists and doctors. But the most baffling thing witnessed even in such a terrifying time was to see a lot of people not trusting the potential threats of the pandemic in its face value calling it hoax while witnessing ever increasing number of people admitted in the hospital affected by Covid day by day and growing number of deaths in front of their own eyes. Apart from interruption of conventional working in office premises, attending educational institutions, operating businesses, it also brought our regular and occasional social, cultural, and religious gatherings to a halt. While all of us were stung and fearful from it with unknown implications and health danger, the economic challenges put all of us also in a precarious condition with constant anxiety. Life for all of us, like everyone around the world, came to a complete standstill. This has brought us to a standstill with uncertainty in our lives never experienced before. It has threatened families and communities with possible personal and social disorders. By the start of March, it forced us to live our life like in a home arrest. On the one hand we are cut out from everything that was our normal and on the other hand we are struggling to readjust everything for a new normal that nobody knows well. While it was a time of great confusion, it was also very important for all of us to be patient to keep ourselves out of chaos in order to come out of this threat imperviously.  Until then, we must be patiently mindful to adapt for a healthy and balanced daily routine. Among others, inspirations gathered from learning yoga and practicing spirituality will certainly be valuable. Perhaps, God is allowing us this time to pay attention to learn yoga and spirituality and introduce such things in our daily routine permanently. We know from our long ancient spiritual history as well from modern practice that those who practice it as part of their life can face physical and emotional challenges in life with strength and grace. At such a terrifying time, we have no choice except stopping the monthly puja, children’s classes, yoga activities and other planned activities, which was beyond our thoughts. Therefore, NAC volunteers started discussing ideas how can we engage the community somehow? We decided to use technology such as zoom, Facebook, viber etc. to offer virtual programs until the situation resumes normal. Our virtual activities included the following. Continuation of the first Saturday monthly puja from 9:30. We started inviting popular speakers with knowledge in religion and spirituality and bhajan/kirtan singer. Continued the existing monthly puja sponsors to conduct puja according to our religious and social practices. Invited speakers were from Nepal, India and many other across USA. This practice is still continued and will remain until then resumption of normal conditions for the congregation at the temple.  Start of a virtual physical exercise session demonstrating safe body stretches and yoga every second Sunday from 10am. We connected people from Chicago and beyond and invited yoga practitioners from Nepal and across the nation to demonstrate their skills to benefit our viewers. Reach out to more children for more participation for newsletter contributions. We were successful in bringing new essays, poems and arts contributors. Formation of Covid19 team comprising of representatives from all the Nepali social organizations and clubs in Chicago. We raised funds, conducted meetings, reached out to community members influenced by the lockdown and infections, and provided relief support as much as we could. Talent show – A full description of this activity is presented in our special issue of the publication titled “NAC Yearbook 2020 Covid-19 Edition. This memorabilia featured messages from NAC members, articles related to NAC activities of the past, family photos, list of Nepalese businesses in Chicagoland, etc. A number of copies were printed and distributed to the contributing families. Its electronic version can be found at: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1uISNl_II8Tym55Fa5tR0syCWk0r7UrLp/view?usp=sharing  We requested everyone to help us and participate to keep everyone in the community physically and mentally sound as best as possible. We believe these activities attracted many people with different interest to attend these activities at the comfort of their home. We think it helped to fill … Continue reading Virtual meetings →

Nepali Mela 2019 – summary of events and achievements Nepali American Center (NAC), in collaboration with other local Nepali organizations, organized its third Nepali Mela (Fair) on Saturday June 29, 2019.  It was an attempt to renew cooperation and coordination of all Nepalese in the Chicagoland area in an outdoor setting with specific emphasis on Nepali flavors (not sure what would be the right word here, tradition or culture?. Here were additional objectives of the mela:: To have a fun-filled outdoor event in Chicago pleasant summer time weather. To meet and greet old friends and make new NAC members for interactions and unity. To encourage young and youth members to participate, volunteer, compete in sports events and help interactions and networking among themselves. To allow local, regional and national level social and professional organizations to present their services and welcome new members to join. To provide a platform for local and regional level Nepali or friends of Nepali, Nepali owned business entrepreneurs and owners to advertise and share their success stories. To allow children and adults to show various talents in arts, music, sports, etc. To fulfil such ambitious objectives, we needed very effective planning and execution of the activities. Various elements considered for the success of the events were: Participating organizations for decision makings and volunteer support Event location  to accommodate potential crowd size Activities – stalls for food, arts, sports, entertainment and other so that it will be interesting to attend by all age groups  Financial – ways to cover the potential expenses for such an event Communication and invitations to guests Participating organizations and volunteers: Since it  was an outdoor event and dubbed as Nepali Mela, it should be open to all Nepalese and their friends. So, NAC invited all the Nepali social organizations and Nepali social clubs. Those included : (1) Nepali American Center (2) Chicago Nepali Terrain Society, (3) Newa American Dabu, (4) Chicagoland Tharu Society, (5) Chicagoland Nepali Friendship Society and (6) NRNA USA IL Chapter. In addition (1) Lali Gurans, (2) Dafne Football Club and (3) Himalayan Rhinos were also invited to join the team. Each of these organizations provided volunteers for help in organizing the event. The team also was very successful to identify and bring volunteers with special talents and commitments. Event location and reservation: (Not sure if we need to provide all these details?) The first and foremost thing we did in the early stage was reserving the event site. We reserved Harms Woods area picnic spot initially in early March. But it was changed as per the suggestion from the Cook County Forest Preserve to St. Pauls Woods at Morton Grove area, which is more suitable for larger gatherings like ours, dubbed ‘special event’ by the Forest Preserve. Activities: Food and vendor stalls, art competition, math competition, sports competition, Nepali handicrafts and arts shows, songs and music and DJ were the major ones among some other activities planned. Foods: Several restaurants, volunteers  from participating organizations and individual vendors brought and sold regular Nepali foods and traditional foods such as sel-roti/achar, pani/puri, momo, etc. to provide varieties  of tastes to the attendees. We  received feedback that all the food catered by vendors were reasonably priced and was of good quality. Similarly the food vendors were happy to get reasonable sales of their items due to the large crowd gathered in the Mela. Sports: Tennis (Mens, Womens and Mixed), Soccer (Mens and Children), Ping Pong (Mens, Womens and Mixed) and Volleyball (Mens and Womens) were organized. A large number of Youths from Dafne FC, Himalayan Rhinos and Lali Gurans members enthusiastically participated in these tournaments that were held on the weekends of June 8/9, June 15/16 and June 22/23. Children soccer was held on June 16. 237 (what is this?) youths (men and women) and a large number of children participated in these sports. Whole month of June weekends were exhausting to adults, but self-energizing and motivating to the youths. Organizing sports activities participated by our youths in itself  was a remarkable feat in the Chicago Nepali community. Furthermore, their enthusiasm and positive attitude was in full display during the games, meetings and the Mela event on June 29. It was them who became the glue to bring all of us together and unite for greater meaning of the Mela and display their potential and their character. Music and entertainment: It was really great for us Nepalese communities living in Chicagoland to have very talented singers and musicians. Both men, women and children were able to put together a great variety of songs, music and dance performance to entertain the attendees. A great part of the time at the Mela was spent on their presentations to completely engage the Mela attendees and enjoy. Their talents and their interest to spend a significant amount of time for the preparation was highly commendable. Arts competition: It was always a thorny and challenging aspect of event organizers to engage our children for their productive roles. (Didn’t understand the intention of this sentence, need to simplify a bit) Some very capable talents in arts and good decision makers of the committee members were highly successful to initiate arts competition from our young children of school ages. Twenty-nine children participated in the art competition, which in itself was a big achievement. Their arts and drawings occupied quite some space at the Mela and attracted all the attendees to see their skill and admire their participation. This was another major successful initiative at the Mela. Math competition: American Society of Nepalese Engineers (ASNEngr) volunteers arranged for a math competition of school age children at the Mela. There were more than 50 students who participated in the competition with great interest. The winners of the competition were awarded medals and certificates by Honorable Congresswoman (from Evanston, Illinois) Jan Schakwoski. This activity was yet another proof of how much our children enjoyed these types of activities and how dedicated the mela volunteers were to hold such an activity. … Continue reading Nepali Mela 2019 →