ANNUAL REPORT AT GENERAL BODY MEETING 2003

Bharatiya Temple of Lansing

December 7, 2003

Dhiraj N. Shah, Chair, Board of Trustees

Dear Friends:

Namaskar and Jai Jinendra.

On behalf of your Board of Trustees and our two priests, Sharmaji and Shastrji, I am happy to report to you that the state of our temple is very good and getting better.

At the beginning of the year we shared with you our vision, guiding principles, and an action plan for the temple. During the year, we provided you regular updates to keep you informed of the temple’s progress. Now, as the year comes to a close, we file the following summation report.

- Our religious and spiritual activities have continued. The monthly pujas, Havan, lectures and seminars by spiritual leaders, peace prayers, and celebration of important religious festivals like Mahashivratri, Ramnavmi, Ganesh Chaturthi, Durga puja have all continued as before. For the first time this year we planned a group Satyanarayan puja which was very successful. Also for the first time the Hindu and Jain Pratistha anniversary celebrations were combined and planned the same weekend as the Havan schedule thus making it a big three day ceremony at our temple in June. Another first this year was the ‘Choti Diwali’ celebration targeted towards young families and children which was extremely successful. All these events were generally well attended by devotees. At the main Diwali program well over 1000 meals were served without any problems whatsoever.

- Temple Treasurer Smruti Shah will give the detailed financial report but let me just say that our financial condition is in very good shape. Puja revenues are up, we are meeting our expenses and money is added to the treasury every month. Special events like Veena Sahasrabuddhe’s concert and group Satyanarayan puja contributed very good amounts to the treasury, and thanks to you, our main Diwali fundraiser was the most successful ever for one year commitments. We had to borrow about $98000 for acquisition of a house for our second priest.

- Our services in the Greater Lansing community have continued. Minesh Mody and Sundari Rajan coordinate the ‘soup kitchen’ activity, CC Khiroya coordinates the ‘meals on wheels’ program, and this year Bidhan Redey is coordinating the ‘food bank’ drive. The many volunteers who contribute their time, effort, and monies in these activities deserve our sincere compliments – they truly are great ambassadors in creating goodwill for our community. Your Board has recently approved couple of other initiatives in community services area where our institutional support may be helpful. We will provide the details as soon as some concrete steps are taken.

- Both inside and outside of our temple community, we have tried to be a little more focused in our communication. Media coverage of temple events has been both positive and prominent. Our relationship with media has never been better. As part of our communication initiative this year we have also begun to send letters to new families welcoming them to the area and our temple, and offering our assistance to help them quickly settle in this area.

- One of our new initiatives this year was to have the ability to offer puja and other service reservation requests through the internet. A lot of work has been done under the leadership of Sashi Reddy and this will soon be implemented. Amresh Joshi was responsible for developing this capability. Vishakha Dagli and Sudha Rani Kusuma have contributed their time and efforts in training individuals who will be responsible to maintain this on an ongoing basis. Raman Anantaraman has been an active participant in this initiative.

- We are also looking to improve our financial and member/donor systems to see if it can provide us better tools to manage our operations and target our message. The knowledge and skills of Minesh Mody, Smruti Shah and Pratin Trivedi will be required to proceed in this work. Rajat Shah has offered to be the lead coordinator in this effort.

- The participation in youth and Bal Vihar classes has held fairly steady. Rajiv Das coordinates the youth classes, and Shashi and Amrita Karve coordinate Bal Vihar classes. We thank these three individuals for their commitment and dedication. The students are learning very important lessons about our religion, philosophy, and values. As appropriate, we appeal to parents to seriously consider encouraging their sons/daughters to join and take advantage of one of these classes. Parents should also consider volunteering their time as well in these activities. A proposal to teach Hindi language has been made so class activity may increase at the temple.

- A senior citizen group ‘Jeevan Jyoti’ exists under the auspices of the temple. You would recall the healthy heart program organized by Meena Sharma a few months ago which was very informative. Madan Lalwani was the Board’s coordinator for this activity. Because of some health problems, however, Madan has not been able to be very active lately. The responsibility for this activity will be assumed by a new individual early in 2004. As we grow older, the significance of this activity should not be underestimated. Our institutional support for this activity can be a significant help in making progress in this area.

- As your Board members we have tried to be as transparent as ever, we have streamlined some of our operations and become more efficient, we have tried to be prudent in spending your donations, and we have tried to reduce our overall operational costs where possible. We have been pro active and initiated some new programs and projects.

- Broadening the base of donors and volunteers – currently there are 950 families on our mailing list. A small fraction of this base regularly contributes to the temple operations through their donations and/or volunteer work. It is our intent to pursue families who have not been very forthcoming in their support for the temple. We feel that every family in our community should share some responsibility in maintaining and supporting the temple. Any help that you can provide in this endeavor will be appreciated.

- Our current year membership has declined. We have received some good suggestions from Shanta Anantaraman for increasing membership which the Board will consider in the coming year. Allow me to make a point here. Many of the ideas to do things differently or better come from individuals like you so please give us your feedback and suggestions. We welcome that. We are all working towards the same goal – to make this temple better.

- Recently we have had some problems in ‘after event cleaning’ of the temple kitchen/dining areas. Your Board is looking at ways to increase responsibility and accountability, and create some enforcement mechanism to effectively control any irresponsible behavior. We cannot and will not compromise temple cleanliness, and will take whatever steps are necessary to ensure that.

- The need for Navagrahas, Yagnashala, kitchen/dining area, elevator, and second bathroom on the main floor was first discussed in the last year’s General Body report and these discussions have continued this year. The issue has generated varying opinions among our membership. We are planning to schedule a member only meeting in January 2004 so that different views get properly aired and this issue gets debated fully, openly and freely.

- Finally, your Board would like to thank all members, donors, volunteers, devotees, and of course both our priests for the continued support of the temple. It is this support that keeps our temple a vibrant and thriving place that it is.

On a personal note, I would like to thank each of the current board members for their ideas, hard work, and dedication. Their efforts were instrumental in this year’s very successful results. I feel privileged to be a member of this team.

Thank you for your attention.