Day 21 of Mentor on Road, USA

“Anything that makes you weak physically, intellectually and spiritually, reject as poison.”
-Swami Vivekananda

New Orleans is a major United States port and the largest city and metropolitan area in the state of Louisiana. It is well known for its distinct French and Spanish Creole architecture, as well as its cross-cultural and multilingual heritage. New Orleans is also famous for its cuisine, music (particularly as the birthplace of jazz), and its annual celebrations and festivals, most notably Mardi Gras, dating to French colonial times. The city is often referred to as the “most unique in the United States”.

New Orleans has one of the largest and busiest ports in the world, and metropolitan New Orleans is a center of maritime industry. The New Orleans region also accounts for a significant portion of the nation's oil refining and petrochemical production, and serves as a white-collar corporate base for onshore and offshore petroleum and natural gas production.

New Orleans is a center for higher learning, with over 50,000 students enrolled in the region's eleven two- and four-year degree granting institutions. A top-50 research university, Tulane University, is located in New Orleans' Uptown neighborhood.

Metropolitan New Orleans is a major regional hub for the health care industry and boasts a small, globally competitive manufacturing sector. The center city possesses a rapidly growing, entrepreneurial creative industries sector, and is renowned for its cultural tourism. Greater New Orleans, Inc. acts as the first point-of-contact for regional economic development, coordinating between Louisiana's Department of Economic Development and the various provincial business development agencies.

New Orleans was developed as a strategically located trading transshipment port, and it remains, above all, a crucial transportation hub and distribution center for waterborne commerce. The Port of New Orleans is the 5th-largest port in the United States based on volume of cargo handled and second-largest in the state after the Port of South Louisiana. It is the 12th-largest in the U.S. based on value of cargo. 

The Port of South Louisiana, also based in the New Orleans area, is the world's busiest in terms of bulk tonnage. When combined with the Port of New Orleans, it forms the 4th-largest port system in volume handled. Many shipbuilding, shipping, logistics, freight forwarding and commodity brokerage firms either are based in metropolitan New Orleans or maintain a large local presence.

Companies either headquartered or with significant operations in New Orleans include: Entergy, Pan American Life Insurance, Pool Corp, Rolls-Royce, Newpark Resources, AT&T, TurboSquid, iSeatz, IBM, Navtech, Superior Energy Services, Textron Marine & Land Systems, McDermott International, Pellerin Milnor, Lockheed Martin, Imperial Trading, Laitram, Harrah's Entertainment, Stewart Enterprises, Edison Chouest Offshore, Zatarain's, Waldemar S. Nelson & Co., Whitney National Bank, Capital One, Tidewater Marine, Popeyes Chicken & Biscuits, Parsons Brinckerhoff, MWH Global, CH2M HILL, Energy Partners Ltd, The Receivables Exchange, GE Capital, and Smoothie King.

Tourism is another staple of the city's economy. Perhaps more visible than any other sector, New Orleans' tourist and convention industry is a $5.5 billion juggernaut that accounts for 40 percent of New Orleans' tax revenues.

Day 21 of Mentor on Road. USA, started with a great interaction with Indian diaspora in New Orleans. Attended the graduation ceremony of Indian origin children organised by American Association of Indian Professionals (AAIP). It was good to meet kids who were extremely smart and talented. They sure would make their parents and both the countries, India and USA proud one day. 

AAIP was founded in 1984 to create a group dedicated to both the professional development of Indian professionals and help others achieve their professional goals, be they high school graduates or new professionals. Some of the major activities in which AAIP engages are: 

• Organizes high school functions to honour, motivate, and encourage professional ethics among the graduating students of Indian origin
• Invites well-known motivational speakers to not only inspire the high school students but also the members  
• Organizes financial seminars on estate planning, taxation, and investing options
• Organizes college functions to facilitate professional networking among college students of Indian origin
• Organizes healthcare seminars by distinguished experts
• Adopted Hoffman Elementary School to assist them in promoting their mission and help under-privileged students
• Supports George Washington High School with small funds to promote their needs
• Provides a small amount of funding to the Tulane School of Medicine to promote research in Urology
• Organizes cultural programs to raise funds necessary to carry out AAIP’s activities
• AAIP members provide medical assistance (emergency and non-emergency) to many Indian students enrolled at UNO and Tulane

Mentor on Road presented the developments in New India 3.0 and the adoption program of smart villages. A lot of them had shown their interest to work with India. 

Looking forward to an eventful day tomorrow.

Jai Ho! (Let victory be yours)