Dear TACT Family Members,

Best wishes to you all. It has been almost two years since I have been serving our Telugu Association of Connecticut (TACT) as President. I can say with great pride and satisfaction that our accomplishments during this short time are noteworthy and will certainly have long lasting impact.

TACT is the largest and oldest of associations serving the Telugu community in the state of Connecticut. Our state is sandwiched between Massachusetts in the North and New York/NJ in the south which have some of the largest concentrations of Telugu speaking people in USA. This fact helped us certain ways and also proved to be a disadvantage in some other ways. It has been a struggle to match with two neighboring big brothers who have access to better resources and can conduct similar activities on a much larger scale. However we tried our best and succeed to certain extent to use this proximity to big organizations to complement our efforts instead of treating them as obstacles to our growth. The success of our Ugadi 2023 program with Sri Mani Sharma Live in concert is one such example of this productive cooperation. We wouldn’t have even thought about conducting such expensive events couple of years back. This is just the beginning. I expect similar cooperation to continue between all Telugu associations in neighboring states. United we grow.

There are few other areas that I have been working on to help serve our community better.

1) Increase the membership base. Over the last two years the average attendance to our programs is increasing rapidly. It is no longer possible to conduct events in small auditoriums to save costs. However considering the fact that there are about 8000-10,000 people of Telugu origin in CT, there is still considerable scope to multiply the current reach.

2) Involve all segments of the community. We are one of the very successful groups of immigrants in terms of accomplishments in business, professional services and in education. However the participation of business community, College and University students and professionals (other than IT) is much less than their actual strength. We worked hard to integrate them with our activities and succeed to certain extent. I take this opportunity to thank them, particularly the business community, for their support

3) Involve in community Service. One of the primary goals of our organization is to help serve the people in need as much as we can and participate in community service. I believe it should be our responsibility to serve the people of the land where we live, make careers and utilize its services. You will receive more communication on our activities to achieve this goal. I request all of us to actively participate in those activities with our children

4) Improve and increase our current activities and practices. This include conduct more diversified events, improvement in communication, internal practices, better organization of programs, inviting different groups of people to show their talent , quality and frequency improvement of our Telugu Velugu magazines etc.. There is always a scope to improve every aspect of the organization. By looking at the record participation and appreciation we received in every event I believe our efforts are recognized. Needless to say there is still lot accomplish. I have faith and confidence that we are on right track and we achieve our goals with your support. Wishing you all a very happy holidays…