Conservation and preservation are the need of the hour. After the successful completion of its first year, United Minds looks forward to another great year.

Dear United Minds Friends,

Hope everyone is having a good time during this holiday season. We wish all our friends a very Merry Christmas and Happy Holi-days. There is no better time to reflect back on our blessings and spread the love and cheer with our loved ones and family. Last minute shoppers several stores including Toys R us are open 24hrs through Christmas Eve. As the first decade of the millennium gets ready to wind down, our hopes and spirits for a better decade remains high. This dec-ade seems to have seen it all. From the housing boom which send prices and profits soaring to the big bubble burst, Terrorist attacks that changed the politics

and brought down some em-pires, Biggest national calamities like the Tsunami, Earthquakes, hurricanes, First Black President, the growth and explosion of so-cial networks like Facebook, you-tube, twitter, Fall of wall street, US automobile Industry, iphones, ipads, 3Gs, 4Gs, biggest scams of all times in India and else-where, death of famous person-alities like Michael Jackson, Ground breaking games like Olympics in China and FIFA in South Africa, this decade seems to have seen it all. What’s in store for the next decade? Only time will answer but the hope and spirit remains high for better times as we learn from mistakes and makes this world a better place for generations to come.

Speech and Debate Awards

Check out our report on Page 2 for the Speech and Debate Awards ceremony that was held on Dec 17th.

UNITED MINDS

12/24/2010 Volume 1, Issue

UNITED MINDS NEWSLETTER

Upcoming Events

UM Chess Session: Jan 9th 2011

Yoga Session: Jan 9th 2011

Tamausa Pongal Vizha: Jan 15th 2011

FIA Republic day : Jan 30th 2011

Geeta Comptetion: TBD Feb 2011

NSF Contests: March 26th & March 27th

2011

Inside this issue:

Speech and Debate Awards 2

Chess and Yoga 3

NSF Contests 2011 Updates 4

Gita Competition 4

FIA Republic Day 5

Tamausa Pongal Vizha 6

Royal Sweets and House of Spices Open in 7

Manmadhan Ambu and Other Indian Movies for this weekend

7

Merry Christmas

It was a wonderful Friday evening after a few chilling winter days that came with freeze warning in Tampa. United Minds volunteers gathered at the Live Oak Club house to do the preliminary arrangements. The speech and debate club kids, who were dressed up well for their final speech, started show-ing up around 6 pm. To everyone’s surprise, Edward Shen arrived with his parents as the first participant promptly before 6 pm. The event was delayed by 7 mins and started at 6.37 pm instead of 6.30 pm.

Mr.Vijayan Nair welcomed the gathering and handed over the baton to Speech and Debate Club President Master Keerthi Premkanth, to address the group and officially start the ses-sion. Reva Vijayan read the Pledge of Allegiance. Mentor Rekha Nair took over to invite the speakers after the Pledge.

Surya Haresh, who is an Under Graduate at UF, helped Mr.Nair to time both the speech and the debate. He is an alumnus of Mr.Nair’s Youth Leadership program from 2009.

Every speech presented was well written and well presented and parents could see a lot of improvement in their kids’ speeches. In between the speeches, there were two debates, Many facts and figures were presented by the debaters about where US education stands relative to other countries like In-dia, China, Finland, Luxemburg, United Kingdom etc. The de-bate was well received by the attendees.

Parents and Guests encouraged the participants by congratu-lating them with several rounds of applauses.

As mentioned in our earlier newsletter this was the toughest batch for Mr.Nair as the team comprised of kids from Grade 1 to Grade 8. Mr.Nair with his skill and experience handled this unique mix very well and groomed every kid to become a bet-ter speaker.

The chief Guest Ms. Lecia Lewis (Toastmaster from Tampa Bay community) enthralled the audience with her crisp speech about importance of dress code, eye contact, getting the audi-ence attention through our gesture and so on. Kids and par-ents enjoyed her humorous speech. Ms. Lewis also handed over the certificate to all the participants.

Mr. Sanjay Mehta delivered the vote of thanks and Mr. Sam-path Narayanan gave the closing remarks. Master Keerthi Premkanth officially concluded the Speech and Debate ses-sion and the entire group enjoyed the dinner provided by the Caterer Pavithra.

This event was fully supported and sponsored by parent and volunteers. We extend our heartfelt thanks to Mr.Nair, parents, kids and volunteers for making it a wonderful evening.

Debate and Speech Club Award– A report

The youngest

participant for

the session

was Edward

Shen from

Grade 1

Page 2 UNITED MINDS NEWSLETTER

Link to Photo

Here…….

The speakers and their topics

were:

Charvi – If I had a Magic Wand

Esha -- Homework

Arathi – Good and Evil

Sharan – India to me

Kaushik – Basketball

Devansh – Field Trip

Neethi – Appreciation

Anmol – Circus Animals

Vishnu – Use it or loose it

Lakshmi – The last Air bender

Uma – Doomsday

Hetvi – My favorite Christmas

Isha – Fame

Debate Topic: Resolved

That in order to stay competitive in global environment US education must move from a US Centric Edu-cation to a Global Centric Educa-tion.

Debate Participants:

Keerthi Premkanth

Gokul Haresh

Srividya Vijayan.

Best Speakers of the evening

Neethi

Edward

Arthi

United Minds Chess Club will resume its session on Jan 9

th

2011. Please remem-ber we have sessions on all Sundays of Jan 2011 and we will be carrying out the RATED chess options to registered kids.

We are also very glad to report on excellent performance at Or-lando National Scho-lastic Chess event which was held Dec 10 -12th 2010.

Ameya Mujumdar was ranked 9

th in

USCF scholastic Nationals event in his 2 grade level. This is a great achievement to be rated within the nations top 10 best players.

Keerthi Vengat settled for a medal in his 11

th grade

level which is a tougher round of all times.

Amruth Sriperumb-

hudur settled for medal at his grade level.

Being a national level scholastic champion-ship event, this tourna-ment saw the best players from all over USA, Puerto Rico, Vir-gin Islands, Hawaii par-ticipated.

Being part of this ex-perience is one thing while achieving (or try-ing to achieve) is an-other side. UM partici-pants benefitted from both.

If we have a group of people for same ther-apy (say for back pain or IT professionals Therapy, Walking diffi-culty and so on) we could get some dis-count for it.

Please check with him directly or contact United Minds @ um-tampa@gmail.com and we will try to pool the members to get in to one group.

Yoga Sessions will resume on Jan 9

th

Sunday as usual batches on morning 7 AM to 8.30 AM and evening from 5.30 PM to 7 PM. Please re-member there is no Saturday class

Therapy through Yoga.- Yes Our Yoga Therapist Mr.Haresh Bhutta is available for one on one session with any members for any specific illness or ailments.

Yoga Guru Haresh Bhutta

113 N Econolock-hatchee Trail

Orlando FL 32825

Home – (407) 275 0013

Mobile – (407) 227 7848

Email:bhuta22@yahoo.com

Chess Club and Orlando National Scholastic Tournament Update

Yoga Sessions

United Minds Chess Club provides all the information and event calendar for various chess tournaments to entire community to help them to participate in

these events.

Page 3 VOLUME 1, ISSUE

Yoga Therapist Haresh Bhutta now

available for your ther-

apy needs

The most exciting Bee contests are here. North South Foundation (NSF) will conduct their Bee con-tests on March 26 & 27, 2011(Saturday and Sunday).

Please mark your calendar and as

per NSF Tampa Bay chapter, NSF

will be held as a two day Bee con-

tests, which includes many new

contests like Geo Bee and Science

Bee.

Yes, as per the available informa-tion, NSF will also conduct work-shop for certain Bee contest and please stand by for the information. Please register yours and your kids

details at www.northsouth.org and send an email to nsf.tampa@gmail.com

Interested in volunteering?

Please send emails to

nsf.tampa@gmail.com

North South Foundation 2011 Contest

Bhavad Gita Competitions

performances, and re-freshments.

From grandparents to parents to children, families and friends have inspired each other and participated over the years.

We welcome the entire community to join and support this noble event, which promotes the universal philoso-phy of Vedanta and helps us build a more harmonious world. Prizes vary in each category.

For registration please contact Mala Vengate-san at mailto:malavhome@gmail.com or (813) 857 0134

Visit http://www.chinmayaprasad.org/gitachanting.htm for more information.

The 2011 Competition is offered in two cate-gories: Open Book Chanting and Memo-

rized Chanting.

Date Time and Venue will be announced shortly. Tentatively

fixed for Feb 2011.

CM Tampa's competi-tion is open to the en-tire community, and features the partici-pants' noteworthy scholarship and disci-pline. All the partici-pants receive memen-tos and the winners receive beautiful prizes after a day of exem-plary chanting, cultural

North South

Foundation is a

non-profit

organization

established in

Illinois in 1989. It

received tax-

exempt status

under the IRS

Section 501(c)(3).

All donations are

tax-deductible.

Page 4 UNITED MINDS NEWSLETTER

FIA:Republic Day Celebrations Jan 30th 2011

Page 5 VOLUME 1, ISSUE

Tamausa-Pongal Vizha Jan 15th 2011

Page 6 UNITED MINDS NEWSLETTER

Manmadhan Ambu Star-ring Kamal Hassan, Trisha, Madhavan, San-geetha releases big in Tampa

Please check the website for the complete sched-ules at http://forindians.com <http://forindians.com/>

Movies Playing

from Dec. 22nd

are:

TEES MAAR KHAN

(HINDI) - http://

forindians.com/

teesmaarkhan.html

MANMADHAN AMBU

(TAMIL) - http://

forindians.com/

manbu.html

MANMADHA BANAM

(TELUGU) -

http://

forindians.com/

mbanam.html

NAGAVALLI

(TELUGU) -

http://

forindians.com/

nagavalli.html

Manmadhan Ambu and Other Indian Movies for long weekend

Royal Sweets and House of Spices now open in Tampa

Page 7 VOLUME 1, ISSUE 1

UNITED MINDS

strength in unity

United Minds Chess club is

on the web. Did you check

it out?

United Minds welcomes any informative and interesting news to share to our members, please send in your contributions and comments and suggestions to improve this com-munity news article. We will be glad to publish them along with our weekly update news-

letter. Please send the articles to umtampa@gmail.com

Wanted to be a Student Editor for one of the newsletters? Please contact umtampaedi-

tor@gmail.com

Did you Enjoy this newsletter?

United Minds will work towards uplifting the Tampa Bay community through various educational, recreational programs and services for all walks of life. People interested in community services, volunteer program could join and serve the community. This group neither supports nor is attached to any religion, association, ethnicity, language, and race. However this group will carry community news to their members to keep them aware of the happening in and around Tampa Bay community.

Newsletter/emails will be sent to all members with community related events and happening without any verification of the actual content of the news or responsibility accounting for the source of the news. If requested, news/ information will be posted to members on case to case basis. This group won't be liable for any false or improper news that was originally flashed to the members.

This group is a common ground for like minded service oriented people to contribute their time to the best for the community without any hindrance due to/from any organizational bureaucracy