President's Message
An Important Opportunity to Shape Our Future
As the newly elected President of the India Association of Long Island, I would like to sincerely wish all of you a very happy, healthy, peaceful and prosperous new year. May all of your hopes and dreams come true and may this year be your most joyous year yet. I would also like to take this opportunity to thank each of you from the warmest corner of my heart for your support and for voting in a wonderful team to lead IALI in 2010.
As I mentioned in my campaign letter, our first priority must be to increase membership. We have approximately 30,000 families in the Long Island area and, yet, only 675 members in our association. We will work hard to increase membership by 15%-20% this year -- a difficult, but achievable, goal. As a first step, we have asked Mr. Lalit Aery to focus his efforts on new member enrollment. In this same vein, I encourage anyone considering lifetime membership to please contact This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .
Effective communication is paramount to the viability and expansion of our organization but we need to do so in step with technology and being kind to the environment. To these ends, Dr. Sukhivinder Ranu has been entrusted with upgrading our website and developing an electronic communication system. Through this system, we will be able to communicate quickly, efficiently, and at great savings to the organization -- savings which will be put towards other projects. Members are currently being contacted to update their email addresses for inclusion in the system.
Financial stability and transparency are also very important aspects of the association. We are extremely fortunate to have Mr. Peter Bheddah as our Finance Chairman and Mr. Gobind Munjal CPA as our treasurer. Our association, like other non-profit organizations, is seeing hard economic times, but under their leadership, I am confident we will safely navigate these hardships. Our team will continue to promote fund raising efforts as well as transparency to our members. Any contributions on your part are most welcome. Please contribute generously.
Youth are the lifeline for the success of any association. There will be a very concerted effort to open a lively youth wing to attract young members. In the coming years, it will be today's young people that will lead our association. We need to invest today to develop leaders who bring energy, vigor and fresh blood that can help us climb to new heights.
At the same time, I am very aware of the growing age of our community. Many of us are nearing retirement. We must concentrate on identifying and providing for the changing needs of our community. IALI has always lobbied strongly for the elderly through venues like Senior Forum, its collaboration with NIASC and other Senior Centers' programs. We also have long sought to establish an India Center that can serve the particular needs of our seniors as well as provide a space for our cultural heritage to be passed on to the next generation. IALI needs to continue to work in collaboration with other organizations to make these goals possible.
There are so many fronts that need attention. On behalf of all the Executive Council Members, I assure you we shall try our best to attend to them all and seek to act in the best interest of IALI and its members. As always, I welcome suggestions – please email me your ideas and concerns at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .
May our faith, hope and determination guide us to a bright future for our community and our IALI.
Sincerely yours,
Jagdish K. Gupta M.D., FACP, FACG