Newsletter Highlights
1. VOSAP Art from Heart: Theme: DISABILITY. 300+ artists from 20+ countries declared as FINALISTS!
2. VOSAP Annual Gala and Award Ceremony: 50 winners will be announced and recognized on Dec 5
3. VOSAP Research with UC, Berkeley: Prevention of avoidable impairment due to Rubella virus
4. VOSAP Enablement: 600 people received gift of vision with eye surgery performed at BPA hospital
Dear friends,
Happy Diwali and Happy Thanksgiving!
On this Diwali, Festival of Lights, let us all commit to drive out darkness of exclusion and ignorance with light of inclusion of Specially Abled People and bring happiness and prosperity for all. We have been tirelessly working over the past two months to expand our social impact to empower Specially Abled People (SAP), across the globe. Here are some of the highlights that we would like to share with you.
You can find details of each activity on our website (www.voiceofsap.org).
1. 300+ artists from 20+ countries are identified as finalists:
Let us all thank amazing volunteering done by internationally acclaimed panel of Judges who evaluated each artwork meticulously. VOSAP online platform helped achieve this voluminous task of evaluating thousands of artwork, averaging them to identify finalists! The finalist list is on the VOSAP website. Every participant also did their best on theme of DISABILITY. Let us congratulate everyone! Very inspiring video messages from artists around the world have sent us, many are on our Instagram (vosap.official), tagged by them.
On October 24, we conducted live panel discussions with panel of judges for all artists to know them, get inspiring messages for doing creative artwork.
Our volunteers are super busy to prepare and email certificates to thousands of artists, build platform for VOSAP Art Gallery (to be launched on Dec 5) to take to millions of people, curate selected artwork, messages etc., prepare for Dec 5 Annual Gala and award ceremony!!!
Dec 5 2020: Global Award Ceremony, 50 Winners will be recognized. Listen, get inspired from Jessica Cox (1st licensed pilot without arms) and Sparsh Shah (born with 30+ fractures)
2. Invitation to all of you to attend VOSAP Annual Gala and Award Ceremony!
Agenda: 90 minutes of online event with several inspiring agenda items. Please join us on FB page – voiceofsap and other live streaming platforms!
1. Witness the announcements of 50 winners, selected vdo messages from finalists!
2. Inspirational talk, life story of Jessica Cox, 1st licensed pilot with no arms!
3. Internet sensation, singer, rapper and song writer Sparsh to host and entertain us
4. Video messages of VOSAP beneficiaries, from dignitaries and strategic donors of VOSAP
5. Launch of virtual VOSAP Art Gallery of selected 250 artwork!!!!
Sarva Mangal Family Trust (SMFT) of Shri Manubhai (our mentor too!) and Rika Shah is Grand Sponsor for this event. Tarsadia Foundation of Shri B U Patel and AST Anzymes of Shri Vasantbhai and Prabha Rathi are event sponsors.
Please SAVE THE DATE and TIME: DEC 5 2020, Saturday @ 8:30 am PT, 10 pm India time
3. Other significant updates:
- With your donations, 600 people in India received vision in last 2 months. Such a fulfilling experience! We thank our partner NGO in India (BPA – Blind People’s Association) who performed these surgeries and has state of the art hospital and have helped thousands of people so far!
- Students of Data Sciences department at UC Berkeley have collected hundreds of thousands of records from various sources such as WHO, UNICEF, GAVI etc. to find out coverage for Rubella related vaccination, globally. It appears that over 1 BN+ women and children need to be vaccinated so we can minimize avoidable impairment in new born babies due to Rubella virus, just like what we did with Polio vaccination! Stay tuned for nice interactive graphical data dashboards to understand serious need to focus on investing in this area.
- Prior 14 research projects, their executive summary are published now! Visit our website to read them all!
- Our efforts to promote innovation, trading and manufacturing of Assisitve Devices expanded to IIT students and globally with VAIBHAV platform (part of “AtmaNirbhar Bharat, Govt of India initiative to connect Indian diaspora with Indian institutes, policy makers etc.). VOSAP founder, Pranav Desai was speaker at these events along with other speakers of Indian origin.
- Read 4 page white paper (vosap website) on ADA@30, Retrospect ADA priorities and goals?
