Nilesh Vayada has been appointed as National Organizer for Sidewalk Astronomy &
100 Hours of Astronomy related activities in the country. International Side
Walk Astronomy Night would also be held during the period of 100 HA which is
from 2nd to 5th April, 2009. 100HA is a global cornerstone project for IYA2009.

Nilesh is joined by Naimul Islam Opu, Jayanta Acharya, Khalid Marawat , Thilina
Heenatigala as National Organisers of Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka
respectively, which can be seen from the link given below:-

http://www.100hoursofastronomy.org/contact/national-organisers

If a click on the link does not take you to the page, kindly use copy and paste
option, after suppressing the blanks.

The role of the National Organizers is as follows

1. Recruit and appoint District Organizers (D.O.)
2. Make sure that questions, comments and suggestions from D.O.s are
answered.
3. Communicate with Regional Organizers (R.O.) with suggestions / comments
on resources
4. Monitor event registration on www.100hoursofastronomy.org to ensure
they are posted correctly.
5. Answer questions about entire project, procedures, etc. or pass
questions on to R.O.s if necessary.
6. Communicate information from R.O.s to D.O.s
7. After event, monitor event reports on the website to be sure they are
clear and complete and make sure that reports are being posted from all areas.
8. Promote event with national press and large media outlets and assist
D.O.s with local press
9. Make sure people all over your region are getting involved.
10. While we are focusing on 100HA at this time, we must remember that ISAN is
a big part of this project and is being held during the same time so we must be
promoting ISAN within this project. We want clubs doing events during the entire
100 hours, but we definitely need them to be out during ISAN.
11. Make sure everyone is registered with the 100HA mailing list.

Nilesh is the 2nd amateur astronomer from India to land sucn a prestigious
position. From the way, the things are going, we are sure, that we will be
seeing more names of amateur astronomers in India handling such important
portfolios in future.

As per the latest message received from Paris, during the IYA2009 opening
ceremony

"Everyone's focusing and counting on 100HA."

Clear skies and best wishes

Manoj Pai
from the land of Gandhi & Sarabhai