Dear Friend:                                                                                                                       June 10, 2009.

Virtual One Family is a platform to bring global Odias together in a deeper, beneficial way that transcends geographical distances, generational differences, gender separations and even social inequiies. Furthermore, we aspire to achieve this in a fun, entertaining, educational and facile environment. This social network platform focuses on Odia heritage or Odia experiences to some degree, but it is very inclusive -- Youth Forums, Women's Forum, Senior Forums, Dance Interest Groups are all possible under the platform.

For illustration, let's look at the theme of "younger generation Odias in North America". Typical questions and issues of interest here might be: What are some bi-cultural issues that are important for the younger generation? What is it that will excite our youth to connect with each other in a deeper way? How do we facilitate the older youth to mentor the younger ones? How can the youth contribute to volunteerism in the USA, Canada or India, etc.? What can we do or start that will pave the way for the younger and older generation Odias here to feel a greater bond and shared interest?  How do we measure our success? How do we sustain and innovate in our effort?

We will start off with a strong Youth Program for the global Odias at the upcoming, 40th Convention of the North American Odias. Many of you have graduated from college years ago and some ofyou are still in college. We would like to be in touch, learn from what you have done so far, rejoice in your successes and create a "Virtual One Family" in short.

Clearly we cannot do much without the leading participation of the youth such as you and other outstanding youngsters. I invite you to participate in the Convention not only to partake in fun & games and soak in a bit of the culture/heritage milieu, but also some seriously interesting topics. We are thinking of two Seminar Tracks at the convention that may hold special appeal to you. This I will briefly describe below. However, for it's success we need people to participate as audience, we need speakers who can share their experience, voice their opinions, articulate their thoughts. We need youth like you who would step forward and mentor other youngsters at school or early college level.  We would like to build a One Virtual Family where we re-integrate across our generational and geographical boundaries or separations!

We would like to start a more permanent Youth Forum that does not die soon after the convention is over..  We would like to build a networking system, a mentoring foundation, a meaningful dialogue  while creating channels or infrastructures to have the "traditional fun" as well. (One such fun activity might be arranging a culture or volunteering trip to India/Orissa, e.g.). 

Of course we need your ideas and your participatory involvement. We will be there to facilitate and help as needed.
Your questions, comments and ideas are most welcome.

love,
Darshan

We have created this virtual networking site (http://OneFamily.seedsnet.org) to support the concept of Virtual One Family. This has most all the features of Flickr, Facebook, You-tube, blogger and more, but is tailored commercial-free and safe use by us. So feel free to try it out and see if more of your friends would create a forum for themselves and manage it themselves.

The OneFamily site itself is not limited to the youth. Any Odia or lover of things Odisha can and should become a member to build that bridge and connectivity to realize the "One Family" concept. Forums and special interest groups can easily coexist within this platform.