EVANSTON, IL: Nilesh Raval, a 13-year-old tuba player from Saginaw, MI and Anjitha Radhakrishnan, an 8-year-old from Nashua, NH won the 13th Annual North South Foundation Senior and Junior Spelling Bee Championships respectively. Krithika Varagur, from Edison, NJ won the Junior Vocabulary contest, while precocious Anand Oza; from North Potomac, MD who had won the Junior vocabulary crown just last year took the senior crown on his first attempt. In the second year of the Math Bee contests, 7-year old Shyam Narayan, a pianist from Overland, KS and 11-year old Nihal Satyadev from Tustin, CA won the first places in Level 1 and Level 2 contests respectively, while two contestants from the Midwest, 7th grader Matthew Vengalil from Grosse, MI and 9th grader Keshav Puranmalka from Naperville, IL got the top ranks in Level 3 and Level 4 contests, respectively.

This year the Foundation held its national finals at Northwestern University (NWU), Evanston on Saturday, August 6th and Sunday, August 7th, 2005. The National Finals were co-sponsored by the South Asian Student Alliance (SASA) of NWU. Over four hundred fifty finalists from over sixty North South Foundation centers throughout the US participated in the event.

Apoorva Rangan from San Jose, CA and Srikrishna Raghavan from The Woodlands, TX won the second place in Junior & Senior Spelling Bee, while Anirudh Dasarathy, a black belt in karate from Broadview Heights, OH and Shaswat Samudra from Plano, TX were the runner-ups in Junior & Senior Vocabulary, respectively. Nikhil Koganti who tied for the 11th place in the 2005 Scripps National Spelling Bee competition won the third place in the Senior Spelling Bee, while Akshayraj Aitha from Dublin, CA repeated a third place finish in the Junior Bee. Sathvika Ramaji, a 7th grader from Miramar, FL and Soham Chakraborty, a 8th grader from Shaker Heights, OH won the third places in the Junior and Senior vocabulary bees. In the Level 1 Math Bee (Grade 2 and lower), Akash Pattabi (whose twin brother Vikram won a finish in the top ten ranks as well) and Niranjan Balachandran, a budding painter both from Plano, TX won the 2nd and 3rd places. In Level 2, Jay Shah from Fremont, CA and Chanukya Malla from Farmington, MI won the 2nd and 3rd ranks. Similarly Arjun Puranik from Palatine, IL and Anand Oza (the Senior vocabulary champ) from North Potomac, MD won the 2nd and 3rd place in Level 3, while Bharat Kusuma from Forest Park, IL and Yasaswi Raparla from Reston, VA won the same ranks for Level 4.

This is the 6th year for North South Foundation’s Brain Bee, a neuroscience contest. Mangala Iyengar, a rising senior from Chapel Hill, NC won this year’s Brain Bee Championship without missing a question throughout the competition. Mangala will be invited to the 2006 International Brain Bee conducted by Prof. Norbert Myslinski of the University of Maryland, Baltimore, Maryland in March 2006. Prof. Myslinksi himself conducted this year’s Brain Bee contest along with Bhakti Nagalla, a past North South Foundation and International Brain Bee champion. Two contestants from the state of Georgia, Arka Mallela from Roswell and Pranay Udutha from Acworth won the 2nd and 3rd places in Brain Bee.

In the path of challenging children of their educational potential, North South Foundation, this year introduced yet another program, “Senior Essay Contest“, for high school students. The essay contest explores the knowledge, critical thought processes, leadership profiles, the ability to organize their inner qualities and apply them to modern day challenges facing the world. The subject of this year’s topic was about United Nations, its involvement in various activities, ability to influence the world leaders and its achievements to make a better place to live. The topic challenged the contestants by encouraging them to take leadership, and articulate how that leadership would translate into organizational activities leading to a change for the good of humanity.

Tenth graders Shazeen Harunani from Rockford, IL and Aarti Iyer from Houston, TX won the first and second place, respectively, while the Brain Bee champion Mangala Iyengar won the third place. A total of thirty-two children participated in the contest, which was graded by a total of seven judges over two days to select the winners. The Essay Contest was made possible by the kind donation of scholarship amounts and setting up of an endowment fund by Dr. Asok Ray, a leading orthopedic surgeon from Chicago under the aegis of Indima Foundation, a charity organization founded by him.

This year’s keynote speaker at the award ceremony for these contests was Dr. Eboo Patel, founder and Executive Director of the Interfaith Youth Core, a Chicago-based international organization that brings young people from different religious communities together to build understanding and cooperation in social action projects. Dr. Patel was recently named “one of thirty social visionaries under thirty changing the world” by Utne Magazine. Dr. Patel gave a stirring speech to the parents and contestants alike impressing upon the audience to follow the twin Indian values of achievement and service.

Enrichment activities were offered during the 2-day event. On Saturday afternoon everyone enjoyed a parent spelling bee conducted by the students as the grand finale of an interactive panel discussion on teaching kids spelling and vocabulary. Kids had fun watching their parents sweat it out at the bee. On Sunday afternoon, there was an interactive panel discussion on teaching problem solving techniques in math. A panel of experts in mathematics answered numerous questions on math competitions and preparing children for these contests. There was an enthusiastic sharing of views and experiences among the moderators and audience. Supervised babysitting (including a magic show and balloon animals), a chess/game room for the kids freed parents to enjoy some of the above activities, lectures, and competitions offered during the two days.

Continuing on with the tradition from past years, children and contestants who had participated in North South Foundation’s Dollar-A-Square (DAS) program were recognized at the Finals by Madhavi Nathan Oliver, the director of the DAS program. Twenty-five children from around the country raised $1,902. As part of the DAS program, participating children throughout the country take an active role in fundraising in increments of one dollar (one square in a sheet of 100 squares). The funds raised as part of DAS contribute to North South Foundation’s mission to provide scholarships to poor but meritorious children in India.

“Great job with this year's finals too, as usual. I have attended the NSF events 3 years in a row and it keeps getting better every year with increasing participation and scale! I was awestruck by the army of ‘Red shirt’ volunteers. Let us keep up the great work and continue to dream bigger each year. I am particularly delighted that we continue to add contests that matter and bring the diversity of talent in the community to the forefront - Math Bee in 2004, Geography Bee Pilot in 2005, Essay Writing Contest and the proposed Public Speaking contest to be added in 2006” was some feedback received from Kalyan Subramanian, a parent from Phoenix, AZ.

“Thanks for giving me an opportunity to volunteer. The whole event was very educative. In fact, I gained some knowledge by volunteering. Would love to volunteer for NSF again in future” said Sudha Saxena, a volunteer from Chicago.

Arindam Chakrabarti, a judge at the contests said, “I greatly enjoyed being involved in the National Finals and seeing so many extremely smart and talented children. I was also especially moved to see that your Foundation brings together some of the nicest and most talented people in the Indian-American community, and all of them share a deep and abiding passion to help uplift India to her rightful place in the comity of nations, and to give to our people true Independence -- control over their lives and destiny -- something I think 1947 promised but did not achieve yet, through education and empowerment.”

The National contest categories consisted of Junior and Senior Spelling Bees for children below 9 and 15 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 spelling and vocabulary were held in 3 phases with the last one involving elimination rounds that made it quite exciting. The Junior Spelling Bee went on for 20 rounds before the winner was identified. The Math Bee that was introduced last year was a popular contest as it attracted massive registrations throughout the regional contests. The Math Bee was held in two phases, one written and another lightning round with questions displayed on a screen for 60 seconds. 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 Senior Essay Writing that was introduced this year is open to grades 9-12. 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 2,500 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.Ratnam Chitturi at 630-323-1966 and check out the website www.northsouth.org.