By Punam Singh & Vaishnavi Pattabiraman
Atlanta, GA, October 10, 2019: Building on the success of the past 20 years, Dream Mile, Vibha’s flagship fundraising event broke all previous records on September 22, 2019 celebrating their 21st anniversary. Dream Mile, the most successful fundraising event for Vibha Atlanta is growing bigger and immensely popular as evident by the continuous stream of vehicles that began to pull into the parking lots before sunrise and enthusiastic crowds exhilarated to participate in this event at The Collection of Forsyth, Cumming, GA.
Vibha, a non-profit and volunteer-driven organization, is a social venture catalyst that brings together people who want to make a positive difference in the lives of underprivileged children including supporting local charities such as: Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, Power My Learning and Children Restoration Network.
The 21st Dream Mile brought outstanding success in fundraising along with an epic number of walk/run registrations. In addition to the fitness events: 1k and 5k walks, 5k and 10k runs, Dream Mile raised the bar by adding a Half Marathon to the mix this year. In Spring 2019, the core volunteer group of 50+ members started their dedicated efforts towards publicity, registrations, sponsorship and fund raising activities for the event. These relentless efforts resulted in a record-breaking registration number of 3,500 walk/run participants surpassing the previous record of 3,000 walk/run participants and raised over $330,000 through fundraising, pledge drives, registrations and sponsorships beating their previous record of $300,000.
Prabir Das and Shiva Nimmagadda, the dedicated Dream Mile 2019 lead volunteers, were elated to see the success of the event. When asked about the reasons behind the massive success of the event, Prabir said, “having strong relationships within the teams is the most critical aspect of making the Dream Mile successful”. Shiva’s strong purpose to join Vibha a few years ago was, “what motivated me to volunteer for Vibha was my background of hailing from a small village where I have seen children missing school because their family could not afford it”. Together, the leads give enormous credit to the untiring efforts of 400+ volunteers inclusive of 200 youth volunteers for making Dream Mile 2019 a huge success. At the event and in appreciation of the exemplary work done, Rajesh Vuchatu was awarded ‘Volunteer of the Year’ award for his outstanding leadership and ‘Special Recognition Awards’ were given to Punam Singh and Ramesh Movva for stepping up to needs of the hour at various Vibha’s events.
Vibha Atlanta is enormously proud of breaking all previous records in registrations, sponsorships, individual volunteer fund raising efforts and gives a huge shout out to all the volunteers for yet another year of flawless and exciting event execution. Vibha Atlanta is extremely grateful to all the 40 event sponsors for their undying support and generosity. Here is a big thank you to our Diamond, Platinum and Gold level sponsors for Dream Mile 2019:
Paramount Software Solutions
Pyramid Consulting Inc
Datum Software
27th Investments
Manhattan Associates
Global Payments
Patel Brothers
This repeat success of the Dream Mile shows the true essence of “Team Work makes the Dream Work” including, community support and tenacity of every volunteer who truly believes that through every mile, we will make a remarkable difference in the lives of underprivileged kids and provide each child the power of education. Go Vibha! Please visit www.vibha.org and join us to support a worthy cause.