India Development & Relief Fund (IDRF) organized its third Volleyball tournament in Burlington, MA during the weekend of September 19-20. 14 teams from Greater Boston area took part in this unique fund-raiser to support poor and needy children in India. Each team paid an entry fee of $90 for participating in the event and IDRF received significant donations from sponsors of the event.

Each team played two games of best-of-five sets in the first round. Top six teams were picked for the Super Six round in which each team played with the other two teams in the group. Winners from each of the groups proceeded to the Finals. Tam Nyugen's Boston-6-Pak team with its strong all-round performance made into finals convincingly without dropping a set while Nashua Spikers team with easy victories qualified to become the other finalist. In the finals, excellent performance from Nashua Spikers in the first set resulted in Boston-6-Pak's tasting their first set defeat in the tournament, but they bounced back to win second and third sets convincingly. Nashua Spikers rebounded back with fourth set victory but it wasn’t enough to turn the game in their favor as Boston-6-Pak continued their spiking attack led by Thuan Pham and Vuong Nguyen in the fifth set. Boston-6-Pak went on to win the final set 25-15 to become the third IDRF Volley ball Champions. The finals were followed by the prize distribution ceremony.

Winners (Boston-6-Pak): Jianrong Liu, Nguyen Truong, Melissa Spencer, Thuan Pham, Vuong Nguyen, Tam Nguyen, Tri Tran

Runners (Nashua Spikers): Rajasekaran Thirunavukkarasu,  Venkatraman Krishnan, Venky Mangapillai, Hari Gowda, Jacob Eipe, Karthikeyan Ramu, Sudhakar Konduru,  Mahesh Gondhi

Narendra and Jyoti Popat of Hope Foundation were platinum sponsors for the IDRF's sports events this summer. Sushil Tuli of Leader Bank, a premier financial services organization was the gold sponsor.

Players and spectators were all praise for organizers for carrying out with perfection such a grand event. IDRF Boston chapter will send funds from this event for providing Entrepreneurship Development Training to Women in Kutch (Gujarat). IDRF has been empowering Women Self Help Group (SHGs) for past few years by organizing & managing Sustainable Entrepreneurship Program covering from Micro Credit to Micro Enterprise. Funds will be used for building a permanent training center.

IDRF´s mission is to support volunteer-based, honest and highly experienced non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in India in serving their populations´ critical needs in education, health care, and welfare, without regard to religion, caste or creed. We request you all to join us in volunteering or help us in any way you can to support the ones who need it the most.

Should you have any questions, please feel free to contact us via email at idrfboston@yahoo.com, or visit http://www.idrf.org.

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