Delhi, Dec 23, 2016: Santa Clarita residents are raising funds to construct the first ever Hindu temple in the Santa Clarita Valley. The temple will be called 'Siddhivinayaka Temple' and will have Lord Ganesh as the main deity.

Reason behind the idea of a temple in Santa Clarita Valley:

Ritu Khadiya, a volunteer with the Hindu Temple says that to make a visit to a temple, the residents of Santa Clarita have to travel really far. She said," Santa Clarita is one valley that doesn't have anything to do with a Hindu temple — for a temple, (SCV residents seeking a Hindu temple) have to go all the way up to the (San Fernando) Valley, North and Palmdale, mentioned hometownstation.com.

We have been thinking about it for past 2-3 years to have something for our community out right here." Khadiya also gave a statement saying,"Kids need to learn about our culture too, we are very bound to our culture and we are strong about it also. We wanted to start something out here so that they get a little bit taste of all festivals, all cultural programs in Hindu society."

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Choosing Lord Ganesha as the main deity:

Khadiya also gave reasons behind choosing Lord Ganesha to be the main deity of the temple. She said, "Ganesha is lord of good luck, and we pray him when we start something new and so that's what was the whole idea behind it." The group of volunteers who are actively behind the concept of this Hindu temple actually thought about it during the festival of Ganesha Chaturthi in September this year. "We were sitting together at Ganesha festival, and everyone came up with same name — 'Let's start with Siddhivinayak temple," she said, referring to the famous Mumbai place of worship.

Contribution and Funding:

A total amount of $51,000 is needed for the temple and the community has already raised about 10 percent of that target in just a few short months. Khadiya also said, "We are very open to collect money for one time right now, because we have a saying in our culture — if you open a temple, the temple runs by itself so we really are looking forward to collect funds and open the temple by the end of January 2017. We have a GOFUNDME me through Facebook, the biggest thing we have right now is you can go into on our website, and you can just click on fund me out there, it's very safe and goes directly to the funds account and it is tax-deductible, too."

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People of Santa Clarita valley can also contribute by volunteering for various services like helping the priest, volunteering for festivities etc. Ritu further mentioned that there are many volunteers from Santa Clarita who are working very hard towards an early opening of the temple.

– prepared by Shambhavi Sinha of NewsGram. Twitter: @shambhavispeaks