LONG ISLAND, NY (TIP): Vegetarian Vision Inc., established in 1992, celebrated its 22nd Annual Thanksgiving Dinner November 23. Founded and Chaired by Harshad K. Shah, Vegetarian Vision has been successful in promoting Vegetarian way of life for over 2 decades. Under the leadership of President Chandra Mehta and with the overall coordination of Flora Parekh & Vinod Shah, Vegetarian Vision celebrated a fun filled “Save the Turkey” Thanksgiving Dinner musical evening.

Several dignitaries, community leaders and organization Presidents were in attendance at the event where Speaker Bob Dibenedetto included an excellent overview of the organization & importance of vegetarian diet for health and environmental reasons, followed by comedy evening by Ray Devito & Dr. Krishna Jhaveri. A beautifully sculptured turkey ice carving pleading to save turkeys was centered and highlighted by President Chandra Mehta, appealing all to consider vegetarian diet and also mentioned to have introduced new vegetarian dishes tasting like meat & even better.

Inspirational and motivating vegetarian quotes by various leading world personalities were continuously portrayed in the background. “The organization launches various programs to help spread Vegetarian way of life. Our youth is our future and we have been encouraging our youth to be a part of the organization to help spread noble cause.” – says Founder and Chairman H.K. Shah. Various projects like Children’s essay competitions, Youth Mr. & Ms. Vegetarian Pageant, Vegetarian Cruise, Thanksgiving dinners, Restaurant Meatless day participation programs, Food festivals, Street Fairs and many more have been successfully conducted over the past several years in an attempt to help spread vegetarian way of life thereby saving the environment and promoting healthy eating habits.

Additional information can be located on our website at www.vegetarianvision.org and our Facebook page for “The Vegetarian Vision – https://www.facebook.com/pages/The- Vegetarian-Vision/170321469719951. Executive council & upcoming events for 2015 were launched by President Chandra Mehta. “I am very excited and honored to be part of spreading such a noble cause” – says President Chandra Mehta.

“As we celebrate the year of Women empowerment, Vegetarian Vision takes pride recognizing several women leaders in the audience & in the Executive council for 2015” – says Vice-President Flora Parekh. Under the leadership and direction of H.K. Shah; Chandra Mehta, Flora Parekh, Vinod Shah along with several committee members & volunteers including Malati Shah, Suvarna Shah, Kirti Shukla, Nivea Kothari, Seema Shah, Kalpana Sukhwal, Minesh Desai, Ashok Acharya, Paresh Parekh, Dr. Krishna Jhaveri, Dr. Uttam Munver, Teena Sukhwal, Harshil Parekh, Kanak Golia and many more, worked tirelessly to make the program a huge success. The presence of several leaders & organization Presidents namely Pam Kwatra & Eric Kumar- SA4RC & G30 for India Vision Foundation (Kiran Bedi US based Organization), Dr. Ajay Lodha (AAPI), Dr. Shashi Shah (RANA), Dr. Bhavani Srinivasan (Queens- LI AAPI), Satnam Singh Parhar (IALI), Harshad & Tilu Lakhani ( Jain Temple Of NY), Rajni Gandhi & Dr. Jyoti Gandhi (Friends of ARCH), Setu Shah (VTNY), Rekha Tolat (Aarti), Ajit Vora & Divyesh Tripathi (Gujarati Samaj of NY), Animesh Goenka (AIA), Dr. Shyam & Maya Rao, Raj Mehta and many more graced the event. TV Asia (Mukesh Gangani) & ITV (Rene Lobo) coverage for the event. “Save the Turkey” raffle included many exciting prizes like NYC hotel stay, Perfume baskets, etc. Sumptuous dinner was served by Jassi restaurant and the attendees danced their hearts out to the tunes of DJ Vic. Vegetarian Vision personalized bags were handed to the attendees as a souvenir.

Executive Committee 2015 in the picture from Right to Left – Kirti Shukla, Malati Shah, H.K.Shah (Chairman), Chandra Mehta (President), Flora Parekh (Vice President), Kalpana Sukhwal, Nivea Kothari (Youth Chair), Teena Sukhwal, Vinod Shah (Development Director), Minesh Desai (Treasurer), Dr. Uttam Munver (Advisory), Harshil Parekh, Dr. Krishna Jhaveri (Advisory), Paresh Parekh.

(Press Release)