Its leaders, Raj Patil and Sharath Bhandary, talk about the biennial convention, which will be held in Atlantic City from September 2 to 4.
AKKA, or the Association of Kannada Kootas of America, is hosting its biennial event in Atlantic City from September 2 to 4, 2016. AKKA was established in 1998 as a non-profit, educational, linguistic and cultural organization that represents the diaspora originating from the state of Karnataka, India. It consists of more than 200,000 members across 40 plus regional associations or Kannada Kootas in North America. Venky Raghavendra, a leader in diaspora philanthropy, talked to Raj Patil and Sharath Bhandary, President and Vice President of Akka respectively, about AKKA, its aspirations and exciting aspects of the upcoming event.
Venky Raghavendra: Please tell me more about AKKA’s role as a convening platform for the Kannada-speaking community and the history of AKKA briefly.
Raj Patil & Sharath Bhandary: AKKA is dedicated to promoting and preserving Kannada — both, the language and the culture — in North America. AKKA also has a number of social responsibility initiatives that have made a significant donation to support causes both in India and the US. Once every two years, AKKA brings together members of the community living in North America and other parts of the world under one roof. The aim of the event is to celebrate past achievements and to promote the language and culture for generations to come.
VR: The biennial event of AKKA is coming up in Atlantic City later this year. What kind of planning & organizing is underway?
RP & SC: We expect the three-day event to attract over 6,000 attendees. Organizing such a large event needs a significant amount of planning & attention to detail, especially since AKKA is a volunteer-only organization. For this year’s event we already have more than 200 volunteers working in various committees led by chairs and co-chairs. These include committees for programs, hospitality, logistics, guest management, special forums for business, women, youth, etc. Our volunteers come from the various Kannda Kootas across the country, and meet at least once a week in their respective committees. The leaders of these committees come together to discuss updates/challenges/issues each week. Once a month we have all the volunteers in an all day meeting to hear updates from everyone. In addition to this we have a team in India helping us coordinate activates there.
VR: Can you talk more about the highlights of AKKA 2016?
RP & SC: This year’s exciting event is designed around the theme of “lets all celebrate the greatness of Kannada.” We picked this based on the strong belief that language has always been & will continue to be a key foundation to preserve any culture over generations.
Over the years, AKKA has evolved into a platform to connect the Kannadigas in North America as well as with those in Karnataka. We would like for our members to benefit from this platform in multiple ways. Our key focus this year is to involve our youth, and design programs/events of interest to them. Also, this year’s our Business Forum track is focused on encouraging Entrepreneurship. We are even planning a business plan competition similar to “Shark Tank”!
We are paying a lot of attention to our various special forums so attendees can benefit from some high value content in their area of interest also interact with people with common interests.
We have also launched a special travel package Karnataka residents who wish to participate but find the logistics of getting here daunting. We have partnered with a travel company to launched www.akkatour2016.com through which anyone interested can register for one of the several tour packages.
VR: What are you planning to do differently this year?
RP & SC: Typically, for AKKA conventions a local Kannada Koota acts as the host chapter. This year (the 9th AKKA), we have changed the model to expand beyond one chapter being the host. This allows volunteers from several chapters in geographical vicinity to Atlantic City to organize the event. The driver behind this was to encourage people from various chapters to collaborate and work together as both the event and AKKA have scaled.
VR: How do you see AKKA bridging the gap with the next generation of Kannada-speakers & the diaspora from Karnataka – especially those born & raised in the United States?
RP & SC: As we mentioned, this year’s event is focused on the Kannada language. We believe language is key to preserving and promoting a culture across generations. Having said that, we have to be more relevant to attract our youth. To this end, we have a very strong youth volunteers group, which is working on how to engage the youth across the entire convention. We also have several focused events for the youth, including college mentoring, entrepreneurship, & networking with peers.
As you know, there are several volunteer organizations running Kannada language schools in their communities. AKKA is initiating a program to see how we could help standardize a Kannada language curriculum across them & hopefully introduce Kannada as a foreign language option in our school system. We have already discussed this with the University of Mysore & they are excited about partnering with us.
VR: What is your personal motivation to get so involved in AKKA, especially given how busy your lives are & how demanding this role can be?
RP & SC: Even though the role is extremely demanding role, it is an honor to be able to give something back to our community at this scale. My biggest personal motivation is to preserve our language for generations to come – I believe this is the strongest bond we can create between us-the diaspora, and those who live back home.
VR: Any closing message/thoughts to fellow Kannadigas?
RP & SC: We would like to invite all of our fellow Kannadigas to actively participate in our initiatives & join us in Atlantic City, for what is expected to be a great event to celebrate our culture!
http://www.akkaonline.org/ for more details of the convention.
1 Comment
Ask AKKA board if they paid the entrepreneurs the prize money that they should have received and publicly awarded? They won’t have an answer. It’s been a year and they cannot pay the measly $10,000 that they owe us and have not bothered to pay.