Hindu YUVA UIUC wins an award at the AACC Leadership Awards 2023 ceremony

Hindu YUVA UIUC won the 2023 Yuki Llewellyn Award for Outstanding Asian & Asian American Student Organization in recognition of our leadership and dedication to promoting unity in and awareness of the Asian & Asian American community. This award was presented on April 24 by David W. Chih, director of the Asian American Cultural Center at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

This award was a great moment for our organization as it was the first time we had received this award after becoming an active organization in 2017. Hindu YUVA has had many firsts this year that we did not have before, such as our first Navratri Garba at the ARC. Our expectation for the number of attendees was greatly underestimated. We had counted over 700 people from all over the campus and community, a total of that passed through those doors when managing the traffic of people coming and leaving. Our event had traditional Garba music, which allowed people to dance to songs that may remind them of home. We also conducted aarti for Durga Devi, the goddess that symbolizes female empowerment, an essential factor for Navratri and Garba. We also had a classic Indian street food treat of masala soda to refresh those dancing hard!

In addition to Navratri, we also make a major contribution to the Diwali festivities on campus by dressing up the Alma Mater in a Sari for the day. During the 2020 pandemic, the vice chancellor of diversity reached out to our organization to celebrate Diwali while everyone was isolated. We continue this tradition annually now where everyone can come to watch us dress her up, write on our Diwali wish board about what they wish for the year, and even let people watch us through the Alma Cam! This is a significant event because even people on tours got to see the diversity on the campus and how our university encourages people from all cultures to celebrate their festivals as a whole.

We have also collaborated with multiple RSOs on campus and organizations within our community, strengthening the old relationships while creating new ones in history. First off, during Diwali, we have raised money to donate food to local food shelters, as helping others is one core value of Hinduism. About helping others, we have hosted and collabed with various faith groups such as the BAPs during Diwali, ISHA for meditation, SKY, and Interfaith in Action for Hindu New Year. Also, annually for Raksha Bandhan, a festival recognizing people that protect each other, we meet with the police officers or Vice Chancellors to thank them for the hard work that they do. We celebrate Ganesh Chaturthi at the Union for everyone to join us, where we have multiple performances from different Indian arts groups who sing or dance; we provide an activity for the people and provide free dinner for everyone. We get our food catered from local restaurants in the community, or made by our very own members at the Hindu Temple! Overall, there are a lot of interactions with other groups that are going on in our RSO that continue to get stronger throughout the years.

We also have the Vivekananda House, which is a physical space for anyone to come and check out. We hold some general meetings at the VH; there is an open vegetarian kitchen, prayer room, library, meditation room, and more. This is the only Hindu space on our campus, and we could not be more grateful for a place we can call our own.

With all of the hard work we continue to put into Hindu YUVA at UIUC, we cannot wait to see where it will go in the future. We greatly thank the AACC for their recognition of our hard work, and we will surely keep this momentum moving forward for the years to come!