College Park, MD: Akshat Shekhar, an 8-year-old from Cambridge, Massachusetts and Amar Mehta, a 12-year-old from Rockville, Maryland wowed the 650-odd audience by winning the 11th Annual North South Foundation Junior and Senior Spelling Bee Championships, respectively. Rajiv Tarigopula from St. Louis, Missouri won the Junior Vocabulary contest while Niyatee Samudra from Dallas, TX took the senior crown. Rajiv Tarigopula came close to winning two championships this year as he won the second place in Senior Bee and Ramesh Govindan from Cambridge, MA won the third place. This year the Foundation held its national finals at the University of Maryland, College Park on Saturday, August 30th and Sunday, August 31st 2003.

All the contests were marked by stiff competition but were remarkable in that the top place winners were all identified at the end of regular rounds without the need for tiebreakers. In fact, Amar Mehta, the Senior Bee champion claimed a unique distinction in the history of these contests and joined ranks with previous champions Prem Trivedi and Samir Patel by achieving a perfect score. In the Junior Bee, two contestants from CA remained tied for the second position at the end of the regular phases. Eventually after two tiebreakers, Debnil Sur of Palo Alto took the second place while Neethi Bangalore of Santa Clara claimed the third place.

The Junior Vocabulary saw a similar tiebreaker for the third position. Sujaan Joshi from Edison, NJ took the third place narrowly edging out Ravi Ram from Tucson, AZ. Ashley Thakur, a 9-year-old from Long Island who claimed the North South Foundation spelling bee championship in 2000 at an age of 7 returned this year to claim the second place in the Junior vocabulary contest. The Senior Vocabulary also had a tiebreaker for the second place. Mangala Iyengar from Raleigh, NC and Saila Balasubramanian from Atlanta, GA eventually took the second and third places respectively.

Three previous Scripps-Howard champions Sai Gunturi, the 2003 champion, Pratyush Buddiga, the 2002 champion and Dr. Balu Natarajan, the 1985 champion, graced the award ceremony. The highlight of the awards ceremony was when Sai Gunturi, who was also the North South Foundation’s 2002 Senior Bee champion and Scripps Howard 2003 champion handed out the Senior Spelling Bee Championship trophy to Amar Mehta. Other winners were given trophies by a glittering cast of former champions of North South Foundation over the past 11 years of the championship’s history who had especially flown in to help officiate the contests over the two days.

An avid Harry Potter fan, Akshat Shekhar who was born in Bokaro Steel City, Bihar and moved to the USA with his parents when he was 3, is a purple belt in Uechi Ryu Karate and is in the honors roll of Kumon for Mathematics. Amar Mehta is a national level skater and loves to play chess. He is currently in 7th grade at Calvert Middle School in Maryland. An aspiring astronaut, neurosurgeon or engineer, Rajiv Tarigopula is not new to the spelling bee circuit. Rajiv won the NSF Best Young Speller Award in 2000 at Houston, TX when he was 7 years old and has been a regional winner in St. Louis for the NSF Spelling Bee in 2000, ‘01, ‘02 and ‘03. Rajiv has also been a St. Louis Regional Finalist in the Scripps Howard National Spelling Bee Program for 3 years and was placed 48th this year. Rajiv is presently in 6th grade, and attends the Sperreng Middle School Program for Exceptionally Gifted Students in St.Louis. Niyatee Samudra has been on a roll in the year 2003. Earlier this year she became the first girl in Texas to win the state National Geography Bee. Niyatee is also a free-lance poet and this year she received first prize (Catherine Patrizi Poetry Award) for one of her poems. The Poetry Society of Texas has also recognized her with the Hilda Trevino Poetry Award.

This is the 4th year for North South Foundation’s Brain Bee, a neuroscience contest. Bhakti Nagala, a 10th grade student at the Math and Science Academy of Hartford, Connecticut won this year’s Brain Bee Championship. Bhakti is a straight ‘A’ student and had the honor of being one of the two children selected into the magnet school from Farmington Township. She is also the Editor of her school year book. She enjoys playing piano and working as a volunteer at the local Red Cross and at the University of Connecticut Medical Center. Bhakti will be representing North South Foundation in the 2004 International Brain Bee conducted by Prof. Norbert Myslinski of the University of Maryland, Baltimore, Maryland in the second week of March 2004.

This year, North South Foundation instituted Viswa Jyothi award, a role model award to identify and recognize individuals who, through their noble deeds and sacrifices, have made significant impact on the society by enriching lives of people with no hope and in turn can stimulate a sense of social responsibility and volunteerism in present day youth. This award was presented to the first recipient, Mr. Rajiv Vinnakota, President and CEO of SEED Foundation at the Championships awards event. The 32-year old Rajiv gave up a career at Mercer Management and successfully lobbied the United States Congress and the Council of the District of Columbia to amend the education budget to provide additional operating funds for boarding charter schools in the District of Columbia and then helped setup the first free boarding charter school in the country for high-risk children coming from high crime-ridden areas of Washington DC. Rajiv's creative solution in Washington DC can be the first in changing the destiny of inner city children across America. During 2003, recognizing his trendsetting, unparalleled and extraordinary accomplishments, Princeton University selected Rajiv Vinnakota as a trustee at the age of 32. He is the youngest to be selected in its more than 230-year history.

This year’s National Finals championships were co-sponsored by the College Park chapter of Association for India’s Development (AID). Two hundred and thirty seven regional contest winners from over 40 North South Foundation centers throughout the US participated in the event. The National contest categories consisted of Junior and Senior Spelling Bees for children below 9 and 13 years respectively. The Vocabulary (word-meaning) contest was successfully introduced for the Junior category for the first time this year and is meant for children below 13 years while the Senior Vocabulary contest is for children below the age of 17. The 1st, 2nd and 3rd place winners of all these contests will receive North South Foundation scholarships of $1000, $500 and $250 respectively, redeemable in the freshman year of their college.

North South Foundation is a non-profit, tax-exempt and a wholly volunteer-run organization that awards scholarships to exceptionally qualified but needy students in India entering colleges regardless of religion, gender, caste, creed or geographic origin. To date, the Foundation has awarded 1,800 scholarships for students in India. In addition, the Foundation organizes educational contests for children of Indian origin living in USA. For more information please call Dr. Samit Bhattacharya at 860-446-1445 or Dr.Murali Gavini at 301-947-2702 and check out the website: www.northsouth.org.