Message from the President
Afshan Barshan

A very Happy Navroze to all of you!!

I am excited and honored to serve you as the President of ZAC for the next term. I am even more excited about working with our new board – a team of young, dynamic and selfless group of individuals who really want to see our community being closely knit and very prosperous. We have a good diversity of generations and professional experiences to make this happen effectively and efficiently. This team is ready to rock!

In the couple of board meetings that we had to date, the team strongly feels that our mantra should be – “Owning our Future”. It means that every person in our community is equally responsible for our current and mainly future existence. Let’s shake off the cob webs of complacency and not always depend upon the generation who built this legacy to keep the flame alive forever. It’s our responsibility to nourish it , grow it and make an impact on the ‘bigger’ community we live in. We should feel proud of our heritage and also be grateful to people who have provided us this great legacy.

Some of the things that we can do to “Own our Future” is:

• Participating – in the various events organized by ZAC (Monthly events, Jashans, Gambhars, Humbandagi, etc.). This is a crucial step in bringing us all closer together.
• Volunteering – at these events, in committees, projects. We can always use help with hall set-up, lunches, transport. You can also volunteer to lead an event and hone your leadership/management skills.
• Educating – ourselves about our religion and more so others about the same. Nudge your kids to attend monthly religious classes and push yourself to attend the adult religious class. All your friends/acquaintances should know about Zoroastrians. Make our existence known within the bigger community.
• Giving back – to help maintain and grow our community infrastructure. We need fuel to keep this machine running. Donate generously to the various funds (General, Mobed, Welfare, Gambhar, Youth, etc.). Make a pledge, in whatever capacity you can, to The Ava Project. Our goal is to pay off the loan as soon as possible.
• Feedback – on things we can do differently to make them better and improve efficiencies. One of my favorite quote is – ”If better is possible, good is not enough”.

I am sure there are many other things that we can do to augment the list above but for now this is a good starter at Owning our Future. Also, I hope to see you all at our Darbe Mehr during the Muktad prayers and celebrate Navroze together on August 18th.

Feel free to reach out to me via email with questions/concerns/suggestions.

Take care and God Bless you all!

Hamazor Hama Asho-Bed!
May we all be united in strength and righteousness!

Read more in the complete August 2018 newsletter