Fwd: Hindu YUVA, Iowa State Univ - Best Student Organization on campus

[Rakshit Ashtekar]

Namaste Hindu Spartans!

Hindu YUVA Iowa State University (ISU) chapter which is one of the dynamic Hindu YUVA chapters in Midwest and also in the country just won the "The Best Student Organization" award in their university by the International Student Involvement. They have won this award 3rd time in a row which is a big accomplishment in its own ways. This shows their commitment and dedication toward the student community in university and also gives the Hindu YUVA as an organization some mainstream campus staff, professors attention. We all do events, activities in campus under HY with a longer and higher vision but such short term awards is also very important and critical to get some campus attention, organization recognition, registering the positive impact which we create by such events...

I asked Ankitbhai, MW Sambhag yuva pramukh to write a short write up describing what is the process of applying and being nominated to such student org awards in university. Please see below process, I am pretty sure there would be similar process in SJSU as well.

Hindu YUVA, SJSU has been a leader in its own ways, running campus events like Suswgatam, SoC, SNY, Holi, Diwali, Ganesh Chathurthi etc... since many years but lets try to get it registered and apply for such awards this year or next when they start accepting applications. One/two people from our team can keep a tap on such activities and opportunities that Student Involvement body has to offer.

We can have a call with ISU HY if need be to learn more... lets do this 😎

dhanyavaad,

Rakshit


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---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Ankit Singhal <ankitsin...@gmail.com>
Date: Mon, Apr 17, 2017 at 4:01 PM
Subject: Process to get Awards for HY

Namaste,

Continuing the tradition, recently Iowa State HY chapter has won "The best student organisation" award by International Student and Scholar Organisation (ISSO). Iowa State has won "The Emerging Student Organisation" award in 2015 and 2016 and "The best organisation committed to diversity" award in 2015 (for this award we competed with more than 800 clubs on campus).

Some of you asked to share the process of this so that other chapters can also apply and win. I will share the Iowa State process but I am sure it similar with all other campuses.

1. The key thing is to look for award application and fill the forms by the deadline. Most of the organisations miss the deadline and thus automatically are out of the competition.

2. Every campus has SAC (student activity center) or something similar. I am pretty sure SAC at each campus sponsor awards for student clubs towards the end of the spring semester. At Iowa State along with SAC, International Student Council and ISSO also have their own awards. Thus we have multiple avenues to win awards.

3. Once the application is out, we have to choose category and fill the form describing why do we deserve this award. We apply in following categories every year:

• Best student org
• Best student leader (we nominate the president of HY generally)
• Best event of the year (we nominate 'Ganesh Utsav' and 'Yoga Marathon' separately)
• Best Supportive Faculty or Staff (we have nominated our HY adviser, Vice president of Recreation center as she is actively involved with us in Yoga marathon in past)

4. There are other categories also where we dont apply such as 'committed to service' but other chapters can apply if relevant.

5. It is very important to find out the process and criteria for awards i.e. whether it is compulsory to be nominated by an outsider or not etc.

6. Writing a good description to your event/org is very important i.e. connecting almost everything to diversity, how did we contribute in campus culture, local community etc. I think they care more about what value you bring to the campus community rather than how noble work you are doing by spreading Hindu culture and practices.

Let me know if you have any specific questions. I feel we can focus on our best campus per sambhag to start with. 

--

Ankit 

The world suffers a lot. Not because of the violence of bad people, But because of the silence of good people!