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2006 NoRouz Festival Event Report Dear Iranian-American Community: My name is Mehran Kamkar and on behalf of the Norouz Festival Committee and the San Francisco Bay Area Iranian-American Chamber of Commerce (IACC), I would like to again wish you all a happy new year. We sincerely hope that you had as wonderful a time as we did during the 13 bedar celebration at Vasona Park on April 1st and 2nd, 2006 in Northern California. We are happy to announce that this two day celebration was very successful. We had over 13,000 visitors. Not only did we cover our costs, but we also managed to raise approximately $2,500. This amount may not seem like a lot. But if you consider the rainy days of March, in which we broke a 100-year record for number of consecutive rainy days, then you realize how lucky we were and became believers that somebody is looking out for us! Thank God for that! It is important to note, that we are becoming increasingly popular with local political candidates running for public office. This year we had San Jose Vice Mayor Cindy Chavez and Council member Chuck Reed, 2 of San Jose’s Mayoral candidates; Council Member Ken Yeager a Supervisorial candidate; County Supervisor Pete McHugh County Assessor candidate and San Jose Council members Forest Williams and Council Member Nancy Pyle and Past Sunnyvale Council Candidate our own Darab Ghafari who came out and visited us and spent some time with us. As for entertainment we had concerts, dancing, Haji Firooz, sorna, doghol and daf. The program started on Saturday with Mr. Ebrahimi and his band leading a procession around the event area. The soothing sounds of the Sorna and Doghol were truly nostalgic and took us back to the good old days in Iran. The singing of Ey-Iran on stage was followed by dances from Beshkan Dance Academy (BDA) and Niosha Dance Academy (NDA). After a short break we enjoyed more beautiful dances by NDA and BDA. At 3:30 p.m. our first concert by Tara entertained us with several of her new songs. Next, Rushid, Northern California’s own pop idol, created a sizzle on stage. The crowd enjoyed every minute of it. The next day, on Sunday, we again started the program with the soothing sounds of Mr. Ebrahimi’s band playing the sorna and doghol. Except this time we had a wonderful surprise. Mr. Jamal Vafaie had accepted our invitation to come and lead the procession. He sang, he danced, he jumped and flipped and did summersaults. He is truly a fountain of youth and the crowd loved him. We then enjoyed more dances with Niosha Dance Academy and Beshkan Dance Academy and their young talented students. After a short break and more dances came a change of plan. The clouds were getting more serious. We knew it might rain later in the day and did not want to cancel our prime time concert. We had to beat the rains and could not wait till 4 p.m. At 2:30 p.m. we presented our biggest surprise, the Iranian king of pop himself, Shahram Shabpareh and his band. He mesmerized the crowd with his wit and showmanship. The crowd was on cloud 9. He created so much excitement we did not care if it rained. Happiness and laughter was in the air and flew like sparks. Shahram performed for almost 1 hour and 30 minutes until drops of rain started coming down and Shahram sang his last song. 10 minutes later the rain stopped. But by then Shahram could not be found! Stage sound was in the capable hands of DJ Teymour (408) 225-6060 with his powerful speakers and instrumentation. Ms. Roshanak Nooh (408) 888-5352 managed media contact and Mr. Ebrahim Pakzad (415) 244-3115 managed the stage and coordinated the entertainment, both are outstanding Real Estate professionals, Mr. Homayoun Asadipour, Producer of Fars TV (408) 629-3277, M.C’d the event. All three donated their time to our program. Our professional videographer, élan Productions, used 3 high definition cameras and recorded over 20 hours of footage for an upcoming Commemorative DVD. To purchase a copy, please visit www.norouzfestival.org or call (408) 999-0211. In addition the key Pro Bono members of the Norouz Festival Executive Committee included:
On the income side, we were blessed with generous sponsors who with their booth purchase and/or their donations and sponsorship of different activities, helped us pay the bills. They are:
Special thanks to the County of Santa Clara Parks, the Supervisors, Park administration, staff, and especially the rangers for hosting us, the Town of Los Gatos, Town Engineer Mr. Kevin Rohani, Pine Press, Mr. Lashgari & Mr. Tajik, Ms. Violet Benyamin, food manager; Parandian Insurance & Mr. Reza, Mr. Jay Jamali & Enviro Safetech for loaning us the defibrillator for the first aid booth, Mrs. Elika Derakhshandeh for Media Contact & First Aid Booth, Mr. Amir Naghavi volunteer coordinator, Mr. Kamran Rahiman and Ms. Setareh Taghvai for Food Booth help, Ms. Talieh Shahrokhi for the beautiful pictures she takes. Show those who support the community, you support them! Sincere thanks to IACC and Mr. Malekian’s, CPA office in San Francisco for doing a wonderful job as our Fiscal agent. Finally I give my gratitude to my business partners, and especially my family for allowing me to take so much time from our lives in order to try to make a difference in our community. If you have any questions regarding this report, please do not hesitate to contact me. Eradatmand Mehran Kamkar mkamkar@cccengineers.com (408) 999-0211 www.Norouzfestival.org , Event Organizer |
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