Respected Sir/Ma’am,

We hope you know how excited we were upon receiving your donation. $5000 is a big sum, and it often takes us organizing many events to raise such an amount.
We do not know who you are or where in world you are located but we want to let you know the impact that your generous donation has had back in India.
As soon as we received the funds we immediately transferred them to Sahayta India so they could be channeled towards patient care and treatment. Eight patients (six adults and two children) were selected by our volunteers there and with your funds we can cover their entire treatment.

Thank you for empowering us in this fight against cancer.

Hi everyone,
We have been in New York for a few months now and have received incredible support in establishing Sahayta here. We have made a few friends and are excited to make many more. We have also been speaking with various talented individuals about leadership opportunities at Sahayta, and are excited to introduce a new Sahayta team member to you:

Simar Grewal
Vice President of Public Relations
Simar is joining our team as our new Vice President of Public Relations. She recently moved from Wisconsin where she was actively involved with non profit organizations serving the Milwaukee community. Most recently she led a team of volunteers as a part of the Hurricane Ike relief effort. We believe her enthusiasm for our cause combined with her strategic planning skills will help us take Sahayta to the next level.

After more than three successful years in Boston, awesome partnerships, donors and volunteers who helped save the lives of many cancer patients, Sahayta is now moving to New York. A large part of the team has relocated from Boston to New York over the last few years, so we are moving our core operations to Manhattan. We will still stay connected to Boston as this is where it all began and the community here helped us get to where we are today. $65000 raised, many lives saved, many families supported – all within three years.

However, our work has just started and we still have a lot to accomplish. As we make new friends and find new partners in New York, we are looking for new energetic and committed leaders for our team. You don’t have to be in or around NYC to join us. You can remotely help us from any part of the world. Just come to us with your creativity, ideas, and enthusiasm, regardless of where you are, and we’ll work together to find a way to powerfully leverage them for the cause.

Please e-mail us at info@sahayta.org if you would like to become a part of our team or have an idea we can team up for! We would love to hear from you!

Sahayta was chosen as one of the four beneficiaries of Harvard Business School ’s Annual Charity auction held in May 2008. The event helped raise $9500 for Sahayta. This is the single biggest amount ever raised by Sahayta US and we want to thank the students and faculty of  Class of 2009’s Section G whose donations to the charity auction made this possible. We also want to thank Jamie Viggiano, MBA student and Volunteer coordinator for Section G, who organized the event. 

Sahayta organized a donation raffle at the India Day Celebrations on Aug 12th at the Hatch Shell by the Charles River. The celebrations featured dance/music performances, stalls selling Indian food, jewellery, art etc.

Sahayta put up a stall to promote awareness about the organization and also held a donation raffle to raise funds. Anyone who donated $5 automatically entered into a raffle to win prizes including a $300 gift voucher from The Wine Gallery in Brookline . Other prizes included $25-$50 gift coupons/gift baskets sponsored by various stores and restaurants around Boston.

The event was quite successful and we were able to raise $810. We thank our generous donors and sponsors (The Wine Gallery, Kashmir Food and Spices, Best Cellars, Trader Joes, The Body Shop, Panaficio Restaurant, Paramount Restaurant, UBurger and Upper Crust) for supporting our cause.

Special thanks to Jyoti, Nikhil, Ankit and Darshan for helping us out.

Google has selected Sahayta as one of the organizations under its Google Grants Program that provides in kind advertising to select non-profit organizations. We can use this award for free AdWords advertising on Google.com to raise awareness and increase traffic to our website.

 To see the impact of this grant, type “cancer charity India” on google.com and see the top link.

Sahayta thanks Google for making it a part of their generous program

Sahayta organized an art exhibtion and auction in downtown Boston on March 30th 2007. The event, which was held at 2 art galleries (next door to each other) provided a unique showcase of works by 11 South Asian painters, sculptors, photographers and film makers from New England. Over 100 people enjoyed an evening of fine art over wine, cheese and hors d’oeuvres.
Boston Sculptor’s Gallery featured a silent auction of two dimensional art (paintings/pictures) by the following six artists.
Lucilda Dassardo-Cooper, Aparna Agarwal, Mahendar Paul, Noel Bonam, Ayesha Khan, and Fozia Vasowalla.

Bernard Toale’s Gallery featured multi-media presentations on the effect of 9/11 on the South Asian Diaspora by the following five artists.
Gabriel Brown (photographs), Aimara Lin (photographs), Valarie Kaur (documentary), Ambreen Butt (paintings), Sarbani Hazra(poetry).

The event helped raise $2000. This money will be used to fund the complete chemotherapy treatment for 3 patients and fund the education of 10 children for 1 year. Thanks to the entire Sahayta team which worked tirelessly for the past few months to put this event together (see pic below). 

Sahayta in partnership with NETSAP(Network of South Asian Professionals) organized a Happy Hour at Tonic, a trendy bar in Allston, MA on Jan 18th.
NETSAP generously donated all proceeds from the ticket sales to Sahayta. The event was really successful with approximately 80 people showing up to show their support for Sahayta.
The Sahayta board thanks NETSAP Boston for organizing the event and looks forward to partnering with them again in the future.

Guru, a Sahayata supporter climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro recently and helped raise funds for Sahayta.

Guru learnt about Sahayta’s cause from a friend and appreciated the importance of the cause. He always wanted to get involved as a benefactor and Sahayta stood out to him because he saw a direct application of the funds raised. He felt that he had to do something to raise awareness. As a result, he dedicated his challenging attempt to climb Kilimanjaro to the cause of Sahayta. Guru was inspired by the stories of various cancer inflicted victims and especially their children who without the help of Sahayta might not get the same opportunities to explore life otherwise.

 We salute Guru’s endeavor in raising awareness for Sahayta by scaling one of the toughest peaks in the world!

Sahayta in partnership with SAMAR (South Asian Marrow Association of Recruiters) organized a registration drive at the Verizon office in Waltham, MA on Nov 21.
The event was quite successful with a lot of people signing up as potential marrow donors. SAMAR’s representative RoopJyot Kaur gave an indepth informational presentation on Leukemia, the Bone Marrow donation procedure and about the lack of registered donors from the minority races in the US (69% of people in the national bone marrow registry are Caucasians, South Asians are just 1%)
 With advancement in medical technology there is no longer a blood sample required to register as a bone marrow donor. Only an oral swab from the cheek is required. The entire process of filling the forms and giving the sample takes just 10 minutes.
 Sahayta requests you to become a marrow donor.  The chance of you matching a patient  are 1 in 20,000 - 1in 100,000. But if you do match your marrow will be that patient’s only chance at survival.