My dear Fellow Aloysians:

It gives me a great pleasure to write to you as a follow up of our Aloysian alumni brainstorming meeting over dinner last week at Akbar Restaurant, Garden City, NY, during the visit to NYC of one of the oldest Aloysians in North America, Dr. Ramachandra Rao, McGill University, Canada.

We are grateful for Dr. Rao for his visit and giving all of us an opportunity to reminisce and share our love for the alma mater and its dedicated faculty. We also thank him for bringing copies of the latest two issues of "ALOYSIAN", the bulletin of SACAA and his encouragement to become Life Members of the alumni association.

Our dinner meeting was made possible specially by the two kind and gracious hosts, Dr. Marian Kamath and Dr. Dinker Rai, the two dynamic Aloysian alumni and accomplished physicians in the U.S.  They brought to the meeting tremendous amount of support, creative ideas and wealth of experience of working in various cultural and  community organizations in the U.S.

We also thank Vinod Menezes in New Jersey for taking the initiative a few weeks ago to get in touch with quite a few of the alumni and for initiating the task of creating a data bank/directory. In this regard, thanks are also due to Mr. Joe Gonsalves, another veteran alumni, in Baltimore, for his work in helping to put together an initial list of the alumni.

A word of appreciation is also due to Mr. Marian Rodrigues, Ms. Madhavi Rao, and Mr. Juny George, for returning our communication, expressing inability to attend but indicating support to our last week's meeting and future events. A copy of this communication is also being sent to them.

The following is a gist of our discussions, consensus, suggestions and a "To Do" list for action/follow-up:

A. Work to keep in close touch with the alma mater and  the Aloysian alumni in North America, organize periodic get-togethers, fellowships and networking events among the alumni and .  This would be done through an informal set up and lose network.  It is felt that there is no need to form a formal structure such as a registered association or a membership body. Fellowships and local networks could be organized by active local alumni.  Naturally, any alumni membership will be direct with SACAA in Mangalore.

B. Create a database of all Alosysians in the U.S. and Canada)/North America).  Praveen Lobo (PL) volunteered to help in creating it with help from alumni in North America.

C. Periodically send out a Web-based newsletter to all the alumni providing news on alma mater and also on NRI alumni, specially in N.A. PL would explore creation of a Website for this purpose.

D. Request Fr. Denzil  and SACAA/OBA to provide  an additional page (insert) with NRI alumni news from various countries in every issue of "The ALOYSIAN". [ -Dr. Rao and Tony D'Silva (TD) to take up]

E. Request Fr. Denzil and the current Rector to treat expense of the office of the SACAA for regular and on-going communication with the alumni as a part of the necessary administrative expense (as they do in the U.S. universities) [-Dr. Rao and TD to follow up]

F. Identify interested and active alumni in various cities/centers in N.A. to help create network and fellowship of alumni in their respective cities/towns.  A few people mentioned in this  respect are: Max Rasquinha/Houston, Dr. Rao & Joe Noronha/Canada, Glenville D'Silva/Florida, Juny George/Dallas, Vinod Menezes & Praveen Lobo/New Jersey, etc.  These local networks may be useful for meeting with Fr. Denzil or other faculty members from St. Aloysius during their visit to N.A. 

This fellowship/network could be called "ALOYSIAN NETWORK OF NORTH  AMERICA" or by any other suitable name that could be soon determined with suggestions from alumni. [TD & Vinod Menzes]

G. To broad-base the source of support to the alma mater, gradually also gather a group of non-alumni, called "Friends of Aloysius College" from among the alumni friends.

H. Become Life Members of SACAA and encourage others to become Life Members. In this regards, each would register five members from among the alumni friends. [DR, MK, others]

The databank will be built with help from the following alumni and friends:

1. Dr. Marian Kamath to speak to Dr. Jude Netto/IIT alumni association reg. Netto's experience in successfully organizing alumni association and fundraising for the IITs in the U.S. and also obtain names of any Aloysians from Netto's databank of IIT grads.

2. Dr. Dinker Rai to provide the Directory of BANA (Bunts Association of North America) and help identify Aloysians to be added to the Aloysian data base inN.A.

3. Speak with Dr. Brian Pereira, Pres. of National Kidney Foundation to obtain list of alumni among the members of the Kidney Foundation. [MK]

4. Approach Merlin Nazareth for list of alumni from his databank of Mangaloreans [MK/TD/Edgar Rasquinha]

5. Approach Clifford D'Souza/Oklahoma for list of alumni that he has been in contact with. [MK]

6. Approach Max Rasquinha/Houston for his alumni list in his area [MK/TD]

7. Approach Mr. Mascharenhas (Dr. Selwyn Baptist's father-in-law) for his list of Aloysian alumni. [MK/TD]

8. Approach Mohan Prabhu/Toronto for alumni names from his list of Konkanis [Dr. Rao/MK]

9. Approach Fr. John Mendonca, NYC, for names of alumni from his list of Mangalorean Club members. [TD/MK]

10. Approach/write to Michael Lobo/Mangalore, who has researched the history of Mangalorean families and their genealogy for names of Aloysian alumni in N.A. [TD to write Fr.Denzil requesting for help in this matter]

11. Obtain  mailing list of FAEE to identify names of Aloysian alumni to be added to our database. [MK/Edgar]

12. Classify the alumni list according to the year/decade of passing; MK and DR will focus on collecting data of alumni who passed out of St. Aloysius in the 60's and 70's; VM in 80's; PL in 90's; Dr. Rao in 50's. We would also request SACAA to help provide such a classified list. [TD/PL with MK, DR and RR]

Well, sorry, this turned out to be a long email. But I hope the above pretty much covers the essence of what we discussed, though not necessarily in the same order of our informal discussions. Let  me know if I missed any important point and thanks for being such a warm, creative and enjoyable group!

Please feel free to send this email to others among your alumni/and friends so that we can get feedback (trdsilva@hotmail.com) and more suggestions to take our efforts to the next level.

All list and addresses can be sent directly to Praveen Lobo (at his email address: praveenlobo@yahoo.com ) who has already started working on creating the database.

Vinod Menezes (vinodmenzes@usa.net ) and I are in touch with Fr. Denzil Lobo, sj, but feel free to contact him directly as well on any matter and his address is: denzile@yahoo.com

Once again thank you for all the support and above all, don't forget  to visit the wonderful and informative site of our alma mater: www: staloysiuscollege.net, read all the latest news and announcements and also sign the visitors' book!

Best wishes,

Tony D'Silva