We are nearing two big events in July. July 23-24 is the much awaited Ohio Utsab at Columbus organized by COBCA and July 30-31 is the Outdoor camping and picnic at Hueston Woods organized by CCI.

Ohio Utsab planning and organization are going on full swing. The artists' visa process has been completed. Discounted hotel rates have been negotiated. CCI's program lineup for the allotted slot is finalized and the teams are meeting on weekends for rehearsals. The highlight would be a collaborative program between COBCA and CCI dancers. In the coming days, we hope to see more such collaboration between the performing arts lovers and practitioners across our different organizations !

The registration rates will go up in 2 weeks, from 7/8/2016. So, please take some time out from your busy schedules and register asap. You can do so either from the CCI website or from the Ohio Utsab website. If you are registering from the Ohio Utsab website, please remember to mention that you are a CCI member in the registration form, so that the membership rates are accepted by the organizers.

The Outdoor Retreat is an exciting event in CCI's calendar and one which kids and adults alike, look forward to each year. For many of our members, this is the first CCI event that they had attended and the experience brought them into the CCI fold ever since. With soccer, volleyball, cricket, treasure hunt, musical chair, obstacle race, badminton, sack race and so on, CCI's annual picnic reminds everyone of the long-forgotten annual sports day in our schools, during our childhood. 

The camping opportunity this year is surely going to be an additional attraction for the community.  Whether you have prior camping experience or not, whether you have all the camping gears or not, whether you are worried about questions such as comfort, food, nature's call and so on or not, the bunch of avid campers in our midst are ready to hand-hold and help you navigate through all these and provide an enjoyable experience. There are 3 open slots at this time for the camping night and we request you to contact Jayeeta/Deepshikha to book your slot before we run out of space.

We look forward to seeing many of you at these July events. Have a great week !

Our Cincinnati Durga Utsav planning for 2016 was kicked off in right earnest by the Board of Trustees over the past weekend. Thanks to all those members who had shown interest to be a part of the core team by responding to BOT's invitation mail sent out earlier. With the key planning assignments in place, we will get to hear from the core team on various aspects of the pujo planning over the next few months. 

Donations from the community was one of the key areas that was discussed. This is one area where we could potentially emulate the culture followed in similar organizations elsewhere; an area which we probably have not tapped and leveraged to the extent, we could have over the years. Keeping in mind that we will be organizing our 10th annual Durga Utsav in 2017 - an important milestone in the journey of our organization -  it is even more important and critical that we have a plan to build upon our existing corpus ... significantly.

We have set a big, hairy, audacious goal for ourselves; and true to the spirit, we received a pledge of 2000 dollars in the first meeting itself from 4 of our members ! Isn't that wonderful? No goal is big enough, hairy enough, audacious enough, if every one of us pitches in and donates whatever amounts he/she is comfortable with. Every single dollar counts. And we are counting on your support!

Please log into the Members Corner to access the link to the donations page. To keep you updated, we will soon be publishing the running list of our donors and donation amounts collected, through these pages.

Have a good week !

​COBCA's Ohio Utsab website is now online ! You can check it out here. While you are browsing through the pages, do check out the partner organization tab where CCI is mentioned in recognition of our collaboration with COBCA and for supporting this unique and noble initiative of getting all the Bengali communities of Ohio together.

If you are planning to register from the Ohio Utsab website, you can do so from the Register and Payment pages. Remember to mention your affiliation with CCI in order to take advantage of the discounted rates for members. The Registration Team will be checking with us the validity of memberships before issuing the tickets, and so it is a good time to renew your membership if you haven't done so already. You can renew your membership here.

Valid membership also gives you access to our Members Corner, that has exclusive information and discounts available to members only. In case you have created your login/password via the Members Corner registration and still cannot access the relevant pages, it is because your membership payment has not yet been received by us. Please pay up your membership dues at the earliest to have your accesses re-stored .. and a huge thanks to all those members who have paid up already. 

For all the entrepreneurs amongst us - whether it is your main profession or a passionate hobby - the Utsab provides an excellent platform to let yourself be known and seen in-person to a wider community .. and potential consumers ! What could be a better way than to setup your own stall and showcase yourself and your creations that most of the folks have only been seeing on social media so far? Besides, it also saves you having to register for the event seperately since you will be getting complimentary tickets as well !! If you plan to register as a vendor, do let us know since there would be a discounted price available to our members - which isn't available on the website. 

So long.

Online payment features for Ohio Utsab and our annual membership are now available on our website. Once you have paid the annual membership dues and have registered through the Members Corner on our website, you will be able to access the discounted Ohio Utsab pricing that are exclusively available to our members only.

The current Ohio Utsab registration rates are valid till July 9th, about a month from now, after which the rates will be going up. So, please register while it is not too late and take advantage of the low rates now. If you are not a member yet, now is a good time to become a member too !

If you do not plan on becoming a member, you can still register using the non-member rates, which are a little higher, from our Register page. These rates will also go up after July 9th. So, please do not wait till the last day.

We are also looking at enabling additional payment processors other than PayPal so that you do not have to create a PayPal account, if you do not have one. Some of you have requested this and we will keep you updated as we make progress on this front. Of course, you can always mail a check to our registered address with your payments, and help save the commission charges :-)