AFVOA Newsletter May 2020

Section 2 - News / Updates from the Association Newsletter No. 1 / 2020 P a g e 19 | 101 Hello Veterans “ Hello Veterans ” is an initiative of AFVOA to connect all Veterans living in Chennai. This is a directory which contains the Name, Address, Contact numbers and Email IDs of Veteran Officers of Army, Navy & Air Force settled in Chennai. This publication has been of immense value to Veterans whenever they have wanted to connect with each other or when Veterans settled in other parts of the country have asked for details of Veterans settled in Chennai. The Baby steps for this initiative was taken way back in 1995, when the First Telephone Directory of Ex-Service Officers Association – Adyar (EXSOA) was published. There after came the Telephone Directory and Address of EXSOA which was brought out in Aug 1997. The additional feature in this edition was that the addresses were included. In 2001, after a gap of four years, the directory took a revised format and was published as Armed Forces Retired Officers Directory 2001 with the caption “ Hello Veterans” . This caption holds good till date and is a unique identification factor AFVOA. After a gap of five years this directory was further revised and the updated version was released in 2009. In 2019, the need was felt to upgrade this Directory since a sea change of information had taken place over a decade. It was also felt appropriate that we should have the updated version of “ Hello Veterans ” ready to be released, to coincide with the Silver Jubilee celebrations of our association. This was a major challenge since a lot of information over the past ten years had to be collated, verified and updated. This was successfully done, and Hello Veterans 2019 was released during the Silver Jubilee celebrations of AFVOA in Aug 2019. A point to be noted here is that this a voluntary initiative of AFVOA to connect Veterans settled in Chennai with other Veterans in Chennai and rest of India. The efforts that have gone into bringing out this directory since its baby steps in 1995 has been purely voluntary. We have received immense support from Army units in Chennai, Naval Foundation and Air Force Association for keeping our database updated and to each of whom we are truly indebted.