Vibha-Chicago for the first time in history of Vibha announced a creative Facebook contest, The Art Of Giving Contest. This contest by offering a platform to showcase the talent raised the awareness about Vibha and its mission to educate, empower and enable every individual who wishes to make a positive difference in the life of the underprivileged child. This was reflected in the contest's theme "What would you give to help a child that is not fortunate enough to attend school?". The contest was open to any original, unpublished, creative work including (but not limited to) short-stories, poems, drawings, photographs and short videos that represented the theme.

The prime focus was to spread the awareness about Vibha in local Chicago area, and the secondary one being to create interest and involvement in volunteers. This contest increased the number of Vibha-Chicago volunteer signups, created a buzz among the volunteers, and helped to retain them in the team by creating more scope for involvement. The contestants’ parents thanked us for giving them an opportunity and idea to starting the conversation among the next generation kids in their family about giving a helping hand. That’s when we felt ‘Mission Accomplished’! We are planning to conduct this contest event every year.

The few advantages of this event are that most of the tasks can be handled with less number of volunteers and also we can engage any number of volunteers if they are interested to get involved! The most of the tasks can be done remotely. Marketing was done on a 0-dollor budget!

We also thank our media partner 'ChicagoIndian.com' and community partner 'Indian Community in Naperville' for their support. (Priya Balachandran). 

Please follow this link for contest details 

1. First Prize - Adults- Cathy Christo

2. Second Prize - Kids under 12 - Riya Ramesh 

3.Most favorite video - Maheshwari Madhanan Watch Video