North South Foundation Congratulates Winners of Spelling, Geography, Math and Science National Competitions

When Snigdha Nandipati, the eighth grader from San Diego, California won the 2012 Scripps National Spelling Bee, it has been a defining moment in the history of North South Foundation, a volunteer-run nonprofit organization based in Chicago. Snigdha became the fifth consecutive Spelling Bee champion by joining the ranks of Sameer Mishra, Kavya Shivashankar, Anamika Veeramani and Sukanya Roy, all of whom were also participating in the foundation’s regional and national contests. In fact the second place winner Stuti Mishra of Jacksonville, Florida and the third place winner Arvind Mahankali of Long Island, New York had the opportunity to hone their spelling skills along with Snigdha and several other bee contestants at the foundation’s national event held at San Jose State University last July. In the National Geographic Bee contests, NSF kids had an amazing run this year. Rahul Nagvekar from Sugar Land, Texas won the championship, while Vansh Jain of Madison, Wisconsin won second rank and Varun Mahadevan of Palo Alto, California finished third. MATHCOUNTS competition had several NSF kids advancing to the national finals held in Orlando, Florida. Ashwin Sah, a seventh grader from Portland, Oregon won the second place in the individual championship, while Niket Gowravaram of Acton, Massachusetts and Sarvasva Raghuvanshi of Naperville, Illinois were placed first and second respectively in the Team competitions. The National Science Bowl competitions conducted by the US Department of Energy also had several NSF children as contestants. Team from Bellevue, Washington consisting of Abhinand Sivaprasad, Aditya Murali, Suvansh Sanjeev, Tejas Bharadwaj and Gokul Gowri was placed third in the middle school category. Dr. Ratnam Chitturi, founder and president of the foundation congratulated the winners and said that the credit goes to the children, their parents and more than 1,000 volunteers of the foundation. North South Foundation has been a training ground for children of Indian origin in US for the past twenty years. Foundation conducts contests in Spelling, Vocabulary, Math, Science, Geography, Essay Writing and Public Speaking at 86 chapters across US during March-May every year. Top scorers in these contests are invited to the national finals held during summer. At the finals, high school students have the opportunity to also participate in Brain Bee, a competition in neuroscience. In 2012, more than 15,000 contestants participated at the chapter level, and about 1,000 will participate at the National Finals. In addition to the contests, NSF conducts workshops and online coaching to help children excel in studies. Through its activities, foundation raises funds to award scholarships for college education to meritorious children from poor families in India, who otherwise would have to abandon the pursuit of higher education. Last year, NSF provided nearly 1,500 scholarships and plans to provide 2,500 this year. For more information please visit the foundation’s website www.northsouth.org.