Sankara Eye Foundation (SEF) organized an event on Telugu literature “TELUGU VELUGU” on October 17th in Santa Clara City Library to raise funds for Sankara Eye Hospital, Guntur. This event was supported by the Bay Area Telugu Association (BATA), which has been working to preserve and promote Telugu culture in the Bay Area.

M.V.R Sastry, Editor of Andhra Bhoomi, one of the popular Telugu daily newspapers in Andhra Pradesh, was the chief guest at the event. Sastry is a scholor and a renowned writer. He has authored several popular books especially on Indian history and the present education system in India. 

Sastry gave a wake up call to all Telugu people to take steps to protect the Telugu language and culture. He praised SEF for its commitment to the cause of eradicating curable blindness in India. He said that it is the duty of every Indian to give something to the mother land.

Prof. Appajosyula Satyanaraya, co-founder of the Ajo-Vibho-Kandalam Foundation chaired the meeting. In his speech, Satyanaraya said that he was amazed at the dedication of SEF volunteers in realizing its vision- “Vision 20/20 by year 2020”. He said that he was very happy to see Indian youth contributing their time, effort and money for the welfare of their homeland and spontaneously donated $1000 to the Sankara Eye Hospital, Guntur.

SEF’s Focus-AP coordinator Venkat Maddipati thanked all the donors who contributed money towards eradicating curable blindness in India by year 2020. Ramachandra Rao and his nephew Kumar Koneru of Los Angeles donated $30,000 towards a bus, Sri Jayaram Komati of Swagath Restaurants donated $12,000 for an ambulance for Sankara Eye Hospital, Guntur.

SEF chairman, Murali Krishnamurthy gave a quick update on the progress of Sankara 
Eye Hospitals at Coimbatore and Guntur. He said that the number of surgeries dramatically improved from 8000 to 50,000 since the inception of SEF in 1998.

Former President of Telugu Association of North America (TANA ) angadhar Nadella, Jayaram Komati and Sateesh Chilukuri were among the attendees.

Murali Krishnamurthy and BATA president Ramesh Mandalapu honored Sastry and Prof. Satyanarayana on behalf of SEF and BATA respectively. 

The program began with the invocation of the Indian National Song “Vandemataram” and concluded with everyone singing India’s National Anthem “Jana Gana Mana”.