Dear All Members of Jat Community in America and Canada,

Through this thread, I intend to draw your attention to make our commitment to fulfil the dream of our elders who worked hard to create the AJA (Association of Jats in America)

To begin my request, I would like to reproduce an email sent by one of the founding members of the AJA to another founding member a few days ago:

Quote:
Hi Baljit!

I found details on The Jatland site about the July 1, 2006 meeting of the Northeast Chapter of Assiciation of Jats in America. I appreciate Col. Tavathia' leadership in AJA.

While I will not be able to attend the picnic, I was thinking about how we started AJA in 1980 and how far we have come in our community. I remember our first meeting in 1981 in Chicago. We had close to 80 persons in attendance. My wife and I had driven from Texas and it was nice to meet so many families and friends, including Dr. Prem Singh Jaglan and his clan from Kalamazoo (it was nice to have home-made laddos from them), krishna Kumar, Dr. Virendra Bisla, Hersh Kumal, and so foerth. We had a great time and elected Dr. Bisla as our president for the coming year.

I started Jat Patrika, a monthly newsletter, and distributed address lists among interested people in this country, Canada, Europe, and India for over12 years. Many friends, including you and Late Himmet Singh, helped paying for the cost of our activities. Beside uou and Himmet, persons like Ram Sarup Arya, Dr. Surendra Pal, Krishna Kumar, Virendra Bisla, Dr. S. P. Chaudhary, Hersh Kumar, Ishwar Singh, Dr. Yesh Pal Singh, B. D. Singh, Dr. Jagbir Singh played role in moving AJA into the future. We started various regional chapters in the U> S> to conduct picnics and Holi & Diwali meetings.

In 1987, the Board of Directors met in Texas. Dr. Surendra Pal took the responsibility to incorporate AJA under an international charities name. We appreciate the help from Ram Sarup Arya as well in moving the charities funds going. You and Himmet gave leadership in so many ways. We have missed Himmet's leadership during the past several years.

It is very gratifying to see AJA activities still going on. It is great to share our heritage and develp family collaborations and friendships.

Best regards. Raghu Nath Singh

unquote,

This email is self explanatory. Dr. Surendra Pal did an excellent job by incorporating the AJA, however it could not achieve the status of a charitable organization due to tax laws and some legal intricacies, which is out of the purview of this post. Mr. Ram Arya was given the task to get the tax exempt status to a charitable organization for the community, and I must say he did very well by doing so. However it could not be done in the name of AJA and hence the NAJC was born.

There are a lot of chapters of AJA in US. As the strength of the community is increasing, there is a need to create few more, probably one each in the areas where the population of the community is dense. Some members like "Vinod Sangwan" had mentioned this on another thread. How do we go about it. I have few suggestions which I am mentioning here. You all may be having some more. Let us all get together and put forward a practical and viable plan to have a National Level Organization of AJA which shall act as a cordinating plateform an umbrella for the smaller organizations or the local and regional chapters.

1. Let us create a core group of the people, who would be responsible of contacting all the Jats in North American Continent. Having ascertained the total strength of the community, this group can project the need of local chapters in some areas. The regional chapters are already active and should continue at their current location. The Regional Chapters should act as an Umbrella over the local chapters in their territory.

2. There should be only one website of AJA, which is curently existing. Mr. Harish Dhayal has done a great job in creating this site. The site needs to be made user friendly and need to have a lot of forms and options for members to interact, including the chat and if possible video chatting.

3. As we move forward, there may be scope for having some own meeting place (owned and operated by AJA) in each region. (Will require a lot of money though, and we need to find out as to how to get the funding) May be AJA can own a motel in each territory which has a lounge, a meeting place and a restaurant on premise. These motels can be run by some of the AJA members who will get the compensation. The income of these motels could be used to help community within the North American Continent as well as could be used to contribute the charitable givings to NAJC. Having this kind of facility will ensure that all the members driving or flying to attend AJA meetings can be accomodated for free during the convention and will have more time to interact with other community members.

4. A formal constitution of AJA could be drawn by the general body (the core group) and approved by all members/office bearers of each regional and local chapters.

5. There will be small issues to run the organization smoothly. These difficulties can be ironed out as we move forward.

6. The success of this proposal will depend only on one sacrifice that each member has to make. We as a community do have a tendency of following the principal or belief "Either My Way or No Way". If we can get rid of this factor, I am sure rest is just a matter of time.

I will be prepared to perfom any duty that the organization or the community would like to entrust on me.

Let us get comments from all of you.

I have deliberately posted this thread on this forum as this is the most visited forum and we do need to get it going. I would request the moderators to leave this thread here itself.