PRAY Open 2010 – A Fund Raising event

PRAY Foundation organized its First Open Golf Tournament on 7th July, 2010. The tournament was sponsored by PHI Promotions who made all the required logistics and operational arrangements with Golfclub Dorhout Mees Biddinghuizen.

Golfclub Dorhout Mees

There were a few last minute cancellations due to unavoidable professional commitments. Despite that the tournament had 17 participants. We had participants from Tata Consultancy Services, Cyberfreight, PHI Promotions and Stream Global Services to name a few.

The participants were welcomed at the meeting area by Pranav Bhagirath.

This was followed with a great lunch organized inside the restaurant. Pranav took a few minutes there to give everyone an overview on the updated activities and status of various projects. The brief was very much appreciated by everyone with a thunderous applause.

The tournament kicked off at 1 PM with the participants divided in 4 smaller teams. There was also a special clinic organized for non-golfers under the supervision of Peter Ackerley, a PGA A professional.

TCS Benelux CEO – Mr. Shankarnarayana getting a golf lesson.

The tournament ended at 4 PM with all the teams back to the pavilion for a ‘Borrel’. 

Here the participants had the chance of sharing the proceedings of the day while enjoying some drinks and snacks. There was a lot of laughter and everyone had enjoyed the beautiful day and the event organized by PRAY.   While everyone was having fun, the organizers were busy consolidating the results to declare the winner.

It was great to hear the news that in fact today we had ‘joint winners’ and were the team of husband & wife.

The winners for the PRAY Open Golf Tournament 2010 are Mr. Harry Lammersen and his wife Mrs. Henny Lammersen

Trophy being handed over to Mrs. Lammersen

In addition to the winners of the tournament, PHI Promotions had also organized a small memento for each of the participants. Everyone loved it!!
Jacques van de Berg getting a memento to remember PRAY Open 2010

The day ended with a big thanks to the sponsors and with the promise that our next year’s event will have a bigger participation – growing on year to year basis like PRAY Foundation.

We would like to thank all the participants for being there and making this a memorable day.

We would especially like to thank Mr. Marcel Mensert and Mr. Manoj Arora of PHI Promotions for all their support and effort in making this event a success. Thanks for your continued support.

Manoj Arora and Marcel Mensert

PRAY India Project – Phase 1 – Basic Education

Since January 2009, the PRAY Foundation has been working to raise funds for its first major project, namely the construction of a girls school in Dibai, India.

The targets of this project are girls aged 5-16 years from poor families. A kindergarten area will also be arranged for, so that employment opportunities for the parents increase.

The objectives of this project are:

• building a school
• designing educational programs
• providing door-to-door counseling to poor families regarding the value of education
• providing education to girls from underprivileged families
• providing a daily meal and regular medical examinations to students
• ensuring the self-sufficiency of the school so that education can continue to run without donations

Interim report – June 2010

Boond Boond Sagar…..

Last year Mumbai received just enough rainfall to hold on till next monsoon. But as the population of the city grows to unimaginable level, its important for a city like Mumbai to be self-sufficient in water.

It is but obvious that the current water reservoirs cannot satisfy Mumbai’s need. In fact no city has a self sustainability with respect to water and its the need to save every drop of water.

Rain water harvesting seems to be the need for the hour. A good public service message for rain water harvesting

The Nano Effect

From August, the Tata Motors plant in Gujarat will be able to take production to a level where it would be easy to drive a Nano without any booking. While its a commendable efforts and a great fight back from Tata Motors after the West Bengal debacle, It got me thinking in the other direction.

Tata Nano is an opportunity for the middle class families to own a car. An opportunity for a family of 4 to travel together and in comfort. But Nano would certainly increase competition forcing others to lower cost in turn making more families to own a car.

But then are we ready to absorb so many car in the current infrastructure?

It takes me an hour to cross a 14 kilometer stretch from office to home and invariably there is a traffic jam every evening. Imagine a thousand cars more. It means more traffic jam and more frustrated drivers. Where’s the joy of owning a car?

The smoke and pollution caused by these extra cars on the road will contribute to the already polluted cities. Although these cars have adhered to the strict pollution control guidelines, it remains to be seen if they can reduce the carbon emission or maybe even maintain it at the current level.

One cannot blame the car makers only. They as a business have seen the potential in the fact that every Indian has the need to travel comfortably. India is still a long way off from developing a fine-tuned mass-transit system.

At the end of the day what most people are looking for a comfortable ride rather than owning a car. They would rather travel sitting in a train/bus comfortably than taking the efforts to drive themselves. Atleast I would be looking at a comfortable ride to home or office.

But the question remains, what is more needed, more cars or a better public transport system. Logic says a better public transport system high on efficiency, cost, speed and comfort. Public transport does make economical sense.

We are still a long way off from cleaner fuel vehicle like hybrid and electricity which harms the environment lesser. But developing a better public transport does require commitment, efforts, time and primarily money.

Will it be too late or will we see an era of countless cars stuck in traffic jam. The future does look bleak for now. Only science will tell.