Dance, music, garba and dandia – Sankara Eye Foundation event in Santa Clara, Calif., aims to raise funds to eradicate curable blindness in India. (All photos, video: Amar D. Gupta/Siliconeer)

Sankara Eye Foundation (SEF) brings various fundraiser events to the Bay Area for its patrons, but the flagship event for SEF is always its Dandia events. SEF has been bringing Dandia to the Bay Area for many years, and has had these events at the Santa Clara Convention Center for over 15 years. SEF Dandia is a multi-cultural extravaganza, celebrating the start of the Indian festive season every fall, and is one of the most successful fundraisers for the organization.

As always, SEF Dandia events are well attended, and this year was no exception with more than 16,000 patrons over the 3 nights, Sept 28, Oct 5 and Oct 12. It was apparent that the audience enjoyed every moment of the evening – starting with “Teen Taal” (3-Clap) Garba, “Rail Gaadi,” “Do Taal” (2-clap) Garba, followed by fantastic performances by local dance groups and Dandia. Every detail of the events were taken care of by SEF volunteers – set-up and decorations to ticketing check-in, Dandia check-in, managing the photo booth and shoe room, helping patrons with wrist bands, and finally distributing the prasad. The effort was appreciated by the audience.

Established in the Bay Area, SEF is a registered 501(c)(3) non-profit organization that has been working for the past 20 years for the cause of eradicating curable blindness in India. Driven by the truly inspirational cause, SEF has currently established nine community hospitals and soon embarking on four new hospital projects. By far the most unique and remarkable characteristic of SEF is that it provides free eye care for those unable to afford it, those members of the rural poor, and this accounts for 80 percent—approximately 200,000 people per year—of the surgeries performed at its hospitals. The tireless efforts by the SEF team since inception, has enabled more than 2 million eyes to receive the gift of vision, utterly free of cost.  Also, it has maintained the top rating of 4 stars from Charity Navigator for sound fiscal management for seven consecutive years.

SEF will focus its fundraising activities for four new projects, Focus Mumbai, Focus Hyderabad, Focus Indore and Focus Bihar. Sankara is inviting Founding Donors – who will also get their names on the “Wall of Founders.” Readers can double the impact of your gifts with company matching, or join the Sankara cause, volunteer and share in the joy of bringing light to someone’s eyes.

Interested readers can visit  www.giftofvision.org for more details or contact Murali Krishnamurthy, Executive Chairman, SEF – muralik@giftofvision.org.