TEMPE, AZ: Kavya Shivashankar, an 8-year-old from Olathe, KS and Aamani Paturi, a 10-year-old from Barrington, IL won the 12th Annual North South Foundation Junior and Senior Spelling Bee Championships, respectively. Anand Oza from North Potomac, MD won the Junior Vocabulary contest, while Keshav Pillai who just moved from Ohio to Virginia took the senior crown. In the inaugural Finals of the Foundation’s newest contest -Math Bee, two contestants from California, Divya Sidharth from Encino and Ganesh Ajjanagadde from Union City won the first places in Level 1 and Level 2 contests, respectively, while two contestants from Glastonbury, Connecticut, Aditya Rajagopalan and Kiran Pendri swept the top ranks in Level 3 and Level 4 contests, respectively.

Rajiv Tarigopula from Chesterfield, MO and Kshithij Shrinath from Sunnyvale, CA won the second place in Senior & Junior Spelling Bee, while Krithika Varagur from Edison, NJ and aspiring figure skater Ami Parekh from Burtonsville, MD were the runner-ups in Junior & Senior Vocabulary, respectively. Rajiv was the 2003 Junior Vocabulary Champion and 2003 Senior Spelling Bee runner-up. Nandhini Sundaresan from Alpharetta, GA had the unique distinction of securing the 3rd place in both the Senior Spelling and Junior vocabulary Bees. Akshayraj Aitha from Dublin, CA and Megha Raghavan from Saratoga, CA won the third place in Junior Spelling Bee and Senior Vocabulary Bees respectively. In the Level 1 Math Bee (Grade 2 and lower), Aditya Kotecha from Union City, CA and Neel Mehta from Audobon, PA were awarded the 2nd rank jointly. In Level 2, Krishna Hegde from Munster, IN and Virup Gubba from Cupertino, CA won the 2nd and 3rd ranks. Similarly Mahadev Nair from Overland Park, KS and Arka Mallela from Roswell, GA won the 2nd and 3rd place in Level 3, while Yasaswi Raparla from Reston, VA and Aman Nalavade from Blue Bell, PA won the same ranks for Level 4.

This year the Foundation held its national finals at Arizona State University, Tempe on Saturday, September 4th and Sunday, September 5th 2004. The spelling and vocabulary were held in 3 phases with the last round being an elimination round that made it quite exciting. The Math Bee was held in two phases, one written and another a lightning round with questions displayed on a screen for 60 seconds.

The Junior Spelling Bee winner, Kavya is an aspiring neurosurgeon and figure-skater and is in the special education program offered for exceptional students by the Kansas State Department of Education. Kavya is also interested in ballet, ice-skating, bharathanatyam and swimming. Through a Dollar-A-Square (DAS) program, she raised $200 for the Foundation to help a child go to college in India by allowing an option to the guests at her birthday party to donate money in lieu of gifts. Kavya shares her love for Harry Potter with the Senior Bee winner Aamani who tied for 4th place and was the youngest in IL state Scripps-Howard contest in 2004. Aamani likes art and plays chess and has won several trophies in Chess. The Senior Vocabulary winner Keshav Pillai is proficient in carnatic music and violin and achieved the 8th rank in the 2004 Scripps-Howard spelling Bee. A seventh grader in Silver Springs magnet school, Anand Oza, the Junior Vocabulary winner is an avid chess player and represented his school in eight competitive activities in chess and computer science, for which he was awarded the Ad Astra certificate of merit. At the Johns Hopkins University Talent Search 2004, Anand was ranked first and second in the sixth grade math and verbal, respectively, in Maryland.

The Math Bee Level 1 winner, 8 year-old Divya Sidhharth is an accomplished poet and had two of her poems published recently in the Anthology of Poetry by Young Americans and in A Celebration of Young Poets. The Level 2 winner, Ganesh Ajjanagadde is a 5th grade student, loves Math and is interested in sports and Indian desserts! Aditya Rajagopalan, the Level 3 Math Bee winner is an 8th and has natural problem solving skills and comes up with solutions to complex problem without formal training. He has won several accolades from an early age and scored the highest in the American Math Challenge (AMC8) in 6th grade in the North East and secured the highest score in the school in 7th grade. The Level 4 winner, Kiran Pendri, a tenth grader is a Deans list honors student and has been an elected representative of Choate Rosemary Halls judiciary committee. Kiran scored in the top 99% in the nation in PSAT 2003.

This is the 5th year for North South Foundation’s Brain Bee, a neuroscience contest. Ashley Thakur, a precocious 11-year old from Long Island New York won this year’s Brain Bee Championship and became the youngest Brain Bee champion in the contest’s 5-year history. In 2000, at age 7, Ashley had been the yougest National Spelling Bee champion of North South Foundation. Ashley was recently featured in the New York Newsday for her extraordinary talent and accomplishment in violin leading her to being chosen as the concert-mistress at the 2004 All County Music Festival in Long Island. Ashley will be representing North South Foundation in the 2005 International Brain Bee conducted by Prof. Norbert Myslinski of the University of Maryland, Baltimore, Maryland in March 2005.

Continuing on last year’s tradition, this year, North South Foundation awarded the 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 Mr. Nipun Mehta, who at the age of 23 started CharityFocus, a volunteer driven nonprofit organization, in April 1999, to inspire the young generation of IT professionals to provide web based technological solutions to other nonprofit organizations worldwide for free. CharityFocus' slogan of 'Helping Others Help Others' clearly demonstrates the charter for their volunteers: building websites, providing technical assistance, and engaging in a wide variety of projects designed to benefit the many nonprofit organizations dedicated to public service. Five years later, and with nearly 5,000 volunteers who donated their time, CharityFocus has served more than 1,110 nonprofit organizations, both US-based and international, with no overhead. What started as one team of four volunteers helping one nonprofit organization to gain web presence has now evolved into providing millions of dollars worth of website services to various nonprofit organizations globally, all for practically no cost.

The Governor of Arizona, Janet Nepolitano, was the chief guest at the Awards Ceremony on Saturday evening. She gave an inspiring speech to the children and parents, and gave away the Viswa Jyothi award to Nipun Mehta. The Awards Ceremony was held at the famous Gammage Auditorium on the ASU campus, the same place where the last 2004 Presidential Debate is to take place on October 13, 2004.

This year’s National Finals championships were co-sponsored by the Tempe/ASU chapter of Association for India’s Development (AID). The contests were the largest in the Foundation’s 12 years of contest history as an unprecedented four hundred sixty finalists from over 45 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 Junior vocabulary (word-meaning) contest is meant for children below 13 years, while the Senior Vocabulary contest is for children below the age of 17. The Math Bee that was introduced this year has been a spectacular success as it attracted massive registrations throughout the regional contests. The Level 1 in Math Bee is meant for Grades 2 and lower, the Level 2 for grades 3-5, the Level for grades 6-8 and Level 4 for Grades 9 and 10. 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 more than 2000 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.