A unique birthday gift

RICE Club’s activities for Ekal’s cause

My brother, Tarun, and I lived in China and India before moving to Florida and were exposed to poverty firsthand. India, with over 200 million illiterate people offers a daunting task. Tarun and I felt that illiteracy was the primary cause of the lack of economic mobility. While attending an Ekal Vidyalaya charity event in 2006, we were inspired to form the RICE (Removing Illiteracy by Collective Education) club which supports Ekal by contributing money to run its schools. During my vacation in Delhi two years ago, I spent time learning about the Ekal organization. I visited a camp where Acharyas (teachers) were being trained to run schools and learned about the structure of the organization. I also visited a school in Faridabad and was utterly impressed by the standard of education and the intelligence of the children. I left feeling more motivated than ever to do my best to help these children.

Activities during 2010-11
We started this year with a new goal: to grow not only our RICE Club, but to spread RICE nationally. We were given this opportunity first when Mr. Ramesh Shah invited me to speak at a high school Hindu camp in Houston, Texas where I spoke to about 55 students about the activities of RICE. After my presentation, I spent the night at the camp getting to know everyone and then got their contact information. After getting back, we informed the students how to start clubs in their own schools. Many of them were extremely interested, and one even designed the RICE logo above. So far a chapter has opened up at Palmer Trinity School in Miami, Fl (whose results I will discuss later) and a few other students are in the process of creating their own chapters.
As most of the club members are seniors, we were busy with college applications so our year started a bit slowly. However, in September, Ekal invited me to their executive meeting in Dallas, Texas. Before then, we managed to accumulate three separate private donations of one school each, and along with a presentation of RICE activities, i presented our first check of the year of $1,095 to Ekal Vidyalaya at the meeting.
After returning from the meeting, despite our busy schedules we managed to sell chick-fil-a once before the end of the semester. Due to a change in management at the chick-fil-a store, our margins on sales dropped significantly and we realized that we could no longer make much money off selling it.
Thus RICE brainstormed for new ideas and focused on being more active in our second semester. In Orlando, the weather starts to become extremely hot quite quickly, so we thought it would be a good idea to sell Italian Ice during school hours. We contacted a popular local store (Jeremiah’s Italian Ice) which agreed to supply us the product at wholesale prices. The idea was an instant success. We sold out in only a few minutes and made a profit of about $150.

RICE also decided to sponsor an event called Vibrant India. We contacted Kathy Reiber, President of the United Methodist Women Association at the Peace United Methodist Church, who agreed to set up a cultural experience at their church. On March 12, 2011, Vibrant India successfully raised $450 after creating a cultural exchange filled with Indian classical music played by local Sitar and Tabla players, Bharatanatyam dance performed by RICE members, artwork made by RICE members, an Indian lunch, and of course, a presentation about Ekal.
Furthermore, at an Ekal sponsored concert in Orlando, my father donated another $365 for one school.
In addition to our activities, the RICE Club Palmer Trinity School (PTS) Chapter started this year and is already extremely active. Led by Chapter President Yashodhara Suri, the PTS Chapter became extremely popular in the school and very quickly about 20 students joined. As it was their first year, they began by experimenting with different types of fund raising plans. Starting with a few bake sales at school, they tried garage sales, selling Starbucks at school, and even participated in an international festival where members did mehndi and sold Indian jewelry. So far, the PTS chapter through their various initiatives have accumulated a sum of $510.75.

Total contributions this year are:

Over the past 6 years, the RICE Club has contributed a total of $17,917.32 to start 49 schools and educate over 1500 children.

Plans for next year
Since much of the year was focused on spreading the club, we were able to only open 7 schools. However, as RICE is picking up nationally, by next year we will be able to make record profits. As I am graduating this year from school, Vice President Shreya Bansal will be taking over as President of the Lake Highland Chapter. She has learned everything about the club and will continue to grow it. As I am going to Stanford University next year, my brother and I plan on starting a new RICE chapter there.

Arjun Mathur