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A Brief History Of The HSNC

A group of approximately twenty Hindu families in the Raleigh, North Carolina, area organized the Hindu Society of North Carolina in 1976 in order to develop a community for Hindus, conduct prayers and rituals together, and teach their children about their Hindu heritage. Dr. G. D. Sharma, whose home was the site for the first Hindu rituals in the area, led the group and has served as the volunteer priest for the community. They met in community halls, homes, and other temporary locations until 1980 when they purchased a former Jehovah’s Witnesses church on Ashe Avenue in Raleigh. As the community grew and that first location became too small, they purchased land in Morrisville, a nearby town, and built the Hindu Bhavan, which opened on the 20th of December 1986. In 1999, they broke ground for a social hall behind the Bhavan, completed in 2001. The social hall provides additional space for community events, classes, and meetings.

Affiliations

The parent organization for the Hindu Bhavan is the Hindu Society of North Carolina, founded in 1976. The Jain Study Center of North Carolina also uses the facilities and has installed an image of Mahavir Jain alongside the Hindu deities. Likewise, numerous regional associations, including the Triangle Gujarati Association, Maharashtra Mandal, Hindi Vikas Mandal, and the Bengali Samaj, hold functions at the Bhavan. A few families from the two area Sikh gurdwaras and from local mosques come to the Bhavan occasionally for special events.

What is HSNC?

Hindu Society of North Carolina (HSNC) was established in the year 1987 with the purpose to provide a place to worship, practice the Hindu religion and provide community support. HSNC facility activities fulfill current and future generations for religious, cultural, linguistic, social, educational, and spiritual needs.

Our campus is located in the heart of Triangle and spread across 25 acres with facilities such as a traditional temple, kids’ playground, garden, cultural hall/auditorium with 1100 capacity, state of the art learning center with 12 flex rooms, commercial kitchen, 500+ parking spaces, library, priest quarters, and a lot of free space in campus with trees and natural surroundings. HSNC’s current membership is close to 3000 (1300 families) however HSNC is always open and welcome’s all religions and faith.

HSNC is a Community Center and we carry out multiple programs for community outreach and support. HSNC Main Programs and Events
  • HSNC Food Drive – In our commercial kitchen, we prepare fresh vegetarian food every Saturday and Thursday for homeless shelters, churches food drive and wake County public schools. In the last two years we have prepared and provided over 100k food packs. This is completely a volunteer-driven program and aims to provide fresh, healthy, and hot meals.
  • Medical Camps – We coordinate with other local organizations to provide free medical checkup camps including vital blood testing and diagnostics with the help of labs and community doctors who are by large our members. Our Covid vaccination camps in collaboration with the Town of Morrisville provided 15000 shots across seven camps. We also had Covid testing free camps in our campus for months.
  • Blood Donation Camps- We conduct blood donation camps 3 to 4 times a year in collaboration with Red Cross to encourage our community members to a donation of blood. These are always very successful camps and on an average we collect 50 units per camp.
  • Yoga, Meditation, and Spiritual Clubs and Camps- Our Yoga club regularly conducts yoga and meditation camps multiple times a year. Anyone can attend our yoga camps. We get a lot of participation across the community for these camps. We celebrate International Yoga Day (21st June) every year.
  • Interfaith Gathering – We often conduct and host interfaith gatherings in our facilities to support multiple faith and religious organizations
  • From time to time we organize Social Awareness and Family Support Programs such as for breast cancer, depression, mental health, separation, family problems, etc.
  • HSNC Senior Club – Our Senior club has close to 200+ members who meet almost every weekday. We have dedicated rooms for them for their activities which include sports, music, social, educational, networking, and spiritual activities. The Senior club also helps local area hospitals with pillows, bedsheets, masks, food, etc. They also provide help and support to senior members living alone with medical conditions.
  • Youth Camps – We conduct youth camps for different age groups that cover different areas such as art, drama, music, communication, personality development, spirituality, etc. We also conduct graduation ceremonies every year. Our Summer camps are very popular because of their curriculum and fun-based activities.
  • Indian Embassy Camps- These camps are held to help the community with new or renewal of passports, visas, and other services from the Indian Embassy for the local 30K Indian diaspora. These are very popular camps and covers the entire State of North Carolina including Charlotte.
  • Special fund-raising programs- various fund-raising musical concerts are conducted for calamities such as hurricanes, earthquakes, pandemics, etc. Our recent programs were for Nepal Earthquake, Hurricanes in NC, Delta Covid in India, etc.
  • Community Events- Events in collaboration with the Town of Morrisville, Wake County, Chamber of Commerce is also conducted like Town council meetings, East meets West festivals, walkathon, yogathon, voting prescient, vaccination drive, Entrepreneurs networking, etc.
  • HSNC is an Umbrella Organization for 20+ regional RTP Organizations that covers different parts of India and Nepal. Our facilities are conveniently located with multiple choices and ample parking hence are ideal for their events. Close to 25-30 such events are hosted every year at HSNC out of which few large events attract 3k members and are held for multiple days.
  • Multiple Religion, Art, Traditional, Cultural & Musical concerts/programs- We conduct 20+ events every year on a large scale where thousands of community members gather to celebrate in different parts of our campus. These include religious and musical concerts by famous Indian artists including Bollywood artists, traditional dances, Holi celebration (playing colors), 10-day Ganesh festival, 9 days of Navratri celebration, five days of Diwali celebration, yoga, poetry, discourse, meditation, education, networking, food, etc.
  • Private Events- Our facilities and campus are available for the community to perform their private functions/events such as weddings, engagements, anniversaries, pre-wedding events, social celebrations, religious celebrations, etc. Our cultural hall, kitchen, and temple hall is always in great demand and regularly booked a year in advance since we offer our facility to the community at large for a very reasonable rate.
  • Sunday Schools- We provide our learning center classrooms to different organizations to conduct their Sunday classes that are utilized for various activities such as Indian Heritage, languages, religions, study groups, music, and dance that would easily attract 2000 + children every weekend before covid.
HSNC is in a true sense is a Center for Community support to cater to their religion, social, senior, youth, culture, traditional, spiritual, networking, and educational requirements.