Florida News
Punjabi Association of Tampa Rocks the Stage APRIL 15
Story provided by Punjabi Association
More than 500 people attended the Punjabi Association of Tampa’s (PAA) Vaisakhi celebrations on April 15 at India Cultural Center. The evening was filled with performances of Giddha and Bhangra by young children and adults, as well as delicious Punjabi food.
Vaisakhi, a celebration of harvest festival in Punjab, is also a religious celebration that marks the birth of Khalsa (meaning the pure one) by tenth Sikh Guru Gobind Singh on Vaisakhi of the year 1699.
This year’s president is Dr. Sanjay Madan and event chair was Dr. Hiroo Kapur. In continuing the tradition of charity, PAA also recognized the work and mission of Children’s Home Network of Tampa with a donation.
To join PAA, email name and phone number to punjabitampa@gmail.comKHAASBAAT.COM WEB SITE, EBLASTS, SPONSORSHIP AND MORE!
By NITISH S. RELE and SHEPHALI J. RELE
In this digital age, it bears no repetition that newspapers are a dying breed. A report by Northwestern University reveals that two newspapers are folded every week. As we steadily march toward our 19-year anniversary (printing monthly since August 2004 without skipping an issue), here are some thoughts for our readers.
Since the onset of Covid, Khaas Baat has been available in its entirety in PDF format at khaasbaat.com for everyone, free of charge. If you would like to receive our weekly emails, let us know at editor@khaasbaat.com And if you want home/office delivery, please fill out the subscription form on page two. Despite rising printing and mailing costs, we will continue to publish Khaas Baat. But we will need sponsors and your support moving forward to make that happen. Checks can be addressed to Khaas Baat, 8312 Windsor Bluff Drive, Tampa, FL 33647. Payment can also be made via PayPal to PP ID:nitishrele@gmail.com
NORTH SOUTH TO HOLD ON-SITE APRIL CONTESTS IN ORLANDO, FORT LAUDERDALE, TAMPA, JACKSONVILLE
North South Foundation (www.northsouth.org) will be holding its on-site educational contests for Orlando, Fort Lauderdale, Tampa and Jacksonville in April. Taking place in the United States since 1993, the contests are designed to encourage academic excellence among Indian American students and prepare them for college.
The contests are grouped into Junior, Intermediate or Senior levels for children from first- through 12th grade. Conducted every year in two steps, children participate in Regional Contests at various locations throughout the country. Then students with high scores, based on a cut-off, advance to the National Finals.
Computer science, spelling, essay, math, vocabulary, history, geography and public speaking contests are offered. Registration deadline and details are available on the web site.
ORLANDO: The contests will be held April 1. Venue is yet to be determined. For information, call Dr. Latha Ganti at (407) 955-0059 or email lathagantimd@gmail.com
TAMPA BAY: The contests, sponsored by Gurukulam of Tampa Bay Sunday School, will be April 1-2 at USF Cooper Hall, 4202 E. Fowler Ave., Tampa. For information, call Ramesh Vasudevan at (813) 701-7870 or email e-mail ramesh.vasudevan@northsouth.org
FORT LAUDERDALE: The Fort Lauderdale contests will be held April 1-2 at The Sagemont Upper School, 2585 Glades Circle, Weston. For information, call Malathi Yeedara at (954) 918-3903 or email malathiyeedara@gmail.com
JACKSONVILLE: They will be on April 13-14. For more information, call Rajiv Gupta at (904) 349-3179 or e-mail gupta_rajiv_jpr@hotmail.com
TAMPA BAY AREA STUDENT ROBOTICS TEAM (IVYWARRIORS) HEADING TO STATE CHAMPIONSHIP
FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC) a program within FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of
Science and Technology), helps students (ages 12-18) learn to think like engineers. Teams design, build, and code robots to compete in an alliance format against other teams. They work on developing autonomous and driver-controllable robot to complete missions on a thematic playing field. Robots are built from a reusable platform, powered by Android technology, and can be coded using a variety of levels of Java based programming. Teams also work on other areas, including creating an engineering notebook, business and sustainable plan, team goals for the season, fundraising, and outreach and engagement with engineering community, mentors, and also with non-technical community.
The new FTC 2022-2023 season began last year in September. FTC Team #16716 IvyWarriors, a student community robotics team from Odessa, has continued to follow and develop their passion for engineering and robotics. It has advanced to the Florida State Championship by winning in the Tampa Bay Regional League Championship in Lakeland, attended by 19 teams on Feb 4. At the Florida State Championship, which will held at the Advent Fieldhouse in Winter Haven on March 3-4, they will compete against 56 other teams from Florida to win a spot for entering the FIRST Robotics World Championship in Houston in April.
IvyWarriors consists of seven high school students (Sahil Vaswani, Joshua Selvan, Rohil Agarwal, Vineet Sharma, Ananth Kutuva, Neil Babu and Avaneesh Venkatesh). These youths come from different schools in the Tampa Bay area, including Land O’ Lakes IB High, Berkley Prep, Hillsborough High, Strawberry Crest High, and Robinson IB High School. The team is supported by two coaches (Abhay Vaswani and Tamil Gurusamy) along with other mentors. To qualify for the prestigious State Championship, the team has worked tirelessly over the past six months to build a robot that completes all tasks relatively efficiently with consistency. This year, the team robot includes 3D printed parts for grabbing cones from a field and holding them on a linear slide to transport and drop on poles with different heights to score.
For more information, visit https://ftc16716.wordpress.com/ and FIRST website at https://www.firstinspires.org/