The primary objective of Ekal’s participation was publicity and exposure to the Organization and thereby reinforce its prominence in NY, NJ, Connecticut areas. As per the tradition, this 34th annual parade took place on ‘Madison Ave’, starting at 42nd street and concluding at 24th street. This year’s theme was ‘Colors of India’ and therefore, the whole parade was drenched in colors, colors, colors everywhere. The grand marshals of this parade were Bollywood stars Sunny Deol, Raveena Tandon and Vivek Ranadive, the first Indian owner of a Basketball team in NBA history. Indian Tennis ace Leander Paes, was a special guest. India’s Consul General in NY, Hon. Shri Dyaneshwar Mulay and New York City Hon. Mayor Bill de Blasio started the procession at 1PM by leading ceremonial Bands, ‘Lezim’ troops and Indian drummers. This year, the parade was watched by record crowd of over 200,000 people, not counting TV/Social-Media coverage and print Media exposure.

Because of limitations that Ekal had to abide by, 67 volunteers (27 Ladies, 40 Gents – 15 youth among them) participated in this 11AM to 3 PM event. The herculean task of coordinating minute details of this event was spearheaded by Shri Jyotindrabhai Patel, Regional President, who also came up with the conceptual idea of decorating its ‘Float’ with a village-hut and a school class in session. The float was wrapped all around by banners and slogans. 

Ekal info-paraphernalia of handouts, flyers for public distribution was provided by Kalpana Fruitwala and Pooja Shah. Jayesh Patel, Prajna Khisti, Parveen Sharma and myself monitored the procession while Sanjay Phanse, Nanda Mounasami, Neera Tulsian took the pictures. Shri Devkinandan Thakurji Maharaj of ‘Bridavan’ led the Ekal’s flotilla procession. During the parade, the youths distributed several thousand Ekal bookmarks in the crowd surrounding the parade while Satish Karnik and Deenbandhu Tulsian distributed Ekal flyers at the end-point of it. All gents wore blue Ekal t-shirt while all ladies wore dusty-brown Ekal t-shirts. Our Volunteers carried two dozen banners, making it the most eye-catching, most waved-at and most photographed (by public) entourage of people. While marching in the parade, the Volunteers, from time to time also resorted to loud slogan - ‘Sponsor a school, Dollar a day’, in unison. Not only the public and the commentators of the ‘Grand Stand’ took significant notice of Ekal’s presence because of all this, but also, the Media covering the parade paid more attention. TV Asia, BU4 and CNN took Jyotindra Patel's  â€˜moving-interview’ and ITV interviewed Jyotindra ji and Prakash Waghmare. For this parade, Ekal volunteers, not only gave their valuable weekend time but also paid for their t-shirts and the Lunch at the end of the parade.