A background discussion (timeline history) is presented below on the birth of Grand Reunion- Concept Paper followed by various outcomes of all meetings that paved way to our present status on GRE.
The idea of GRE was first initiated by Dr. Ai Gurung (1983-87 batch) in 2016 among a few of us. However, the seed of this brilliant idea had to wait for COVID-19 restrictions for germination as people started realizing the importance of virtual communication between distant friends. This led to the formation of a six-member UOR-Canada (Task Force) alumni group from Edmonton, Vancouver, Toronto, and Winnipeg on June 17, 2020 to explore the view of our alumni about GRE firstly in Canada. The first brainstorming virtual meeting of this group took place on June 27, 2020. The meeting came up with important ideas about the concept of GRE with respect to its name and modality, such as – UOR/IITR Nepal Chapter–Grand Reunion, in 2-5 years, possibly at some resort near Kathmandu including a need of an accurate and complete database for communication. As a follow up to this meeting, the group updated our alumni database of Canada and reached out to all the 27 friends, one-on-one, to hear their general view on GRE.
We had to cancel few meeting dates before we settled with our second task force group meeting on October 3, 2020. By this time, the task force committee was able to schedule the upcoming virtual meetings in Zoom platform. Sincere thanks go to the Nepali Language and Cultural Centre (Winnipeg) for sharing the Zoom platform for this task force committee. The six-member Canada task force committee expanded to eight to include alumni from the senior batches. It was a good meeting, where we discussed on short- and long-term plans and formulated strategies to create an atmosphere to get to know our IITR-Nepalese friends beyond our batch mates and at the same time generate a powerful voice from outside Nepal to share with IIT Roorkee Alumni Association of Nepal (IITRAAN) Executive Council to consider planning a much bigger and memorable event in the days ahead. The outcomes of the group meeting were:
• Finalize the Concept document about Grand Reunion to share with alumni,
• Take all necessary action to expedite the alumni database update by engaging more friends from
US, Europe, Australia, and Asia (outside Nepal),
• Schedule a virtual meeting on November 28, 2020 between friends in Canada, USA, and Europe,
and
• Expand the Task Force Committee beyond Canada
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