WALTHAM, MA—Girish Mehta, founder and executive director of Indian Circle for Caring USA Inc., known as ICC, will receive this year’s Community Service Award at New England Choice Awards Gala on Friday, Oct. 27, at Westin Hotel in Waltham, MA.
Girish Mehta
The core mission ICC, which is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year, is to serve entire Indian community through volunteering efforts. ICC is a volunteer non-profit organization focused on providing urgent or emergency guidance and support for community members and their families as they may encounter unplanned and unexpected events such as serious sickness, hospitalization, accidents, family crisis, and death/bereavement of a loved one.
The Waltham, MA-based organization has about 5,500 members across the country.
In an exclusive video interview with INDIA New England News, Mr. Mehta talks about the growth of the organization, how it works and serves the community and its future plans. To watch the full interview, please click here or on the video below.
Started in August 2007, ICC has been building awareness in the community by working with existing social, religious, professional, services, media and other organizations as well as participation at various events. ICC has has received support of over 60 organizations. In order to provide needed support to its clients ICC has built a bank of over 250 volunteers and established strategic partnership with several organizations.
As a result of these efforts and community support, ICC and its volunteers have served and continue to serve over 500 families, as these families were going through difficult and challenging situations. The people ICC has served ranged in age group from birth to 94 years and represented various parts of India as their place of origin, full range of educational background and socio-economic strata.
One of the signature drives of the ICC has been to inform, educate and empower fellow community members about the need to prepare – “Health Care Proxy & Living Will” through the use of Five Wishes. Since this need is for all adults in the United States, ICC has conducted seminars and workshops (free of charge) on the subject of Health Care Proxy in fifteen (15) states – from Arizona to Washington at over 60 venues as a community service. Through its direct reach and website, ICC has been able to further this cause by distributing over 15,000 documents, free of charge. These are easy to use and simple to execute documents. These documents are available in English as well as bilingual versions of Gujarati, Hindi, Bengali and Urdu.
Other core members of ICC include Amit Akkad, Chetan Mepani , Jayanti Patel, Krishna Kalghatgi, Yogesh Parikh and Sangeeta Saxena.