Young Families, Solution - Make it Affordable!
In order to make the convention attractive to younger participants, we have a revolutionary plan of charging a significantly lower fee ($50-75) for kids. We are confident that this will attract additional 800-1000 younger families to the convention. They will bring additional revenue to the tune of $120K-150K, more ideas, and more volunteer efforts and provide a path for taking of BMM's mission ahead.
Of course, we plan to effectively manage kid’s activities in a grand style separately and away from the main convention hall so that seniors & adults can enjoy serious programs without disturbance from kids.
We are planning to offer a great deal of children's activities in 2009. Our budget allocation for Children's activities is 100- 150% more than previous conventions. We have a plan to give kids a thrill of visiting an indoor Carnival of sorts. We feel confident that this will close the loop on our aim of attracting young families.
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| Learning a great lesson from Atlanta Convention where youth participation was greatest at Karsh Kale's concert, we have definitive plans to arrange dinner cruises, youth concerts and many other specific programs that will provide the best of both worlds to our youth. Our budget allocation for Youth activities is 75-100% more than previous conventions e.g. Atlanta.
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Learning a great lesson from Atlanta Convention again, we intend to increase the spiritual component as well as classical programs appealing to this age group. Our plan to offer complementary entry on one day to recently married young children of senior citizens will provide a ground for family union for them. We will plan to take special care and provide a peaceful environment, free from kids' disturbance, for seniors during few select programs.
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North America wide Marathi Mandal Participation
We have definite new plans to ensure excellent participation by most Mandals & Art groups from North America. Needless to say, we will make sure, 2009 convention in Philadelphia will not just become Philadelphia Mandal's Sneha Sammelan!
PMM has very harmonious relations with neighboring Mandals. Our Ganesh Festival experience of dealing with 8-9 Indo-American organizations every year will help us a lot in achieving our goal.
We plan to provide complementary booths for participating Marathi Mandals to showcase their work, felicitate and recognize the Mandals for their help, provide complementary hotel rooms for presidents, consider providing discounted deals to their members and provide them opportunities to increase their membership.
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Navinyapoorna Programming
We are thinking of every possible avenue to remove "toch-to-pana" from our programs. Great concepts, professional execution, good sets will be our plan. Adding that with great lighting effects will no doubt bring the necessary ‘aha’ factor.
Some of the new program concepts that PMM has in its collective mind are:
- A fusion family program appealing to young married Marathi couples who are born and brought up in USA. We intend to offer this program FREE to such couples if their parent's are registered for the convention.
- We plan to organize a premier of 1-2 Marathi Movies that are scheduled for release in May-June-July 2009
- A drama program on famous Marathi Industrialists from yester-years to inspire young entrepreneurs
- Marathi Idol singing/dance competition for Sarvaguna Sampanna Marathi Youth coordinated with all Marathi Mandals, with semi-final and final in convention
- Ekapatri/Stand-up comedy competitions or programs
- Combined Natya Sammelan if logistics work out
- Marathi Ghazal Programs and Kavi Sammelan if logistics work out
- Folk art programs from Shahirs, Gondhalis from Maharashtra
- Spiritual programs like Pravachans, Kirtans from saints
- Parisamvaad of young politicians of Maharashtra.
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Our attempt will be to serve different specialty menu e.g. Nagpuri, Kolhapuri, Malvani, Goan, Peshvai and Mumbai styled vegetarian and non-vegetarian menu everyday.
We plan to invite 3-4 specialty cooks/chefs from Maharashtra and make their services available to local caterers
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Not only will we strive to keep the participants engaged throughout the convention, we will also facilitate site-seeing tours to surrounding areas such as New York, Washington D.C., Atlantic City, etc.
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