JAINA Convention & Jain Diaspora Conference Coverage

JAINA Convention 2011

Respected Jain Diaspora Conference Speakers and Friends Around the World:
Jai Jinendra!

First of all, I want to thank all of you from the bottom of my heart for honoring JAINA and me by attending last weekend's 16th Biennial JAINA Convention in Houston, Texas, USA, and speaking at the 2011 Jain Diaspora Conference on July 3. It was a great pleasure to meet you all in person over many different occasions last weekend, and to learn about your wonderful caring work, unique achievements and contributions of Jains to improving the world. I trust your return trip home was smooth and safe.

Speakers - Wasn't it just great to be a participant in a fun-fair 'mela' type of event celebrating our Jain Way of LIfe and meeting other like-minded individuals and communities from across North America, India and other countries? For those of you who ran short of speaking time due to our packed Diaspora conference agenda, I am very sorry for this inconvenience - Michchami Dukkaram! I received valuable feedback from both, participants and speakers; therefore, the next time, we will definitely provide ample time for speakers, Q&A and multi-media changer-overs.

I am also grateful to Jain community leaders who sent us messages of greetings from around the world (Kuwait, Dubai, Singapore, Australia, Kenya, UK, Belgium) - we hope to see you present at the podium next convention in July 2013, as well as expand our outreach to Jain leaders in 36 diaspora countries!

Thanks also go to my Diaspora Advisory committee members for their valuable advice and assistance in planning the Jain Diaspora Conference: Dr. Sushil Jain, Mrs. Lata Champsee, Shri Dilip V Shah, Dr. Sulekh Jain, Shri Ashok Domadia, and Mrs. Harsha D. Shah (JSGIF Kuwait).

Attached is the electronic edition of The South-Asian Times, a popular US-based news weekly which documents several highlights from the JAINA Convention (see pages 18-23) including summaries of Jain diaspora presentations by most of you - Many thanks and credit for this excellent coverage go to our Diaspora speaker, Shri Kamlesh C. Mehta, who as Chairman of SA Times, has arranged such good coverage for us. The future opportunity is for Jain groups worldwide and especially those in North America to be more proactive in contributing news articles and achievements to the media - this is the best way of spreading awareness of Jainism to everyone.

Once I have obtained all presentations and slides from our speakers, we plan to upload proceedings and link them at www.jaina.org so stay tuned...

Effective A new JAINA Executive Committee is now in place under the leadership of Dr. Sushil Jain (). All committee contact info is found at www.jaina.org. We look forward to hearing your feedback and new ideas/proposals for collaborations between JAINA and your respective organizations across the Jain Diaspora.

SouthAsianTimes 12_vol 4

Click on image to download the PDF.