Women Achiever Award

I received a letter from one International Friendship Society that my name was under consideration for their 'Women Achiever Award'. They said they were quite confident about my meritorious services and achievements. Then they requested me to send my biodata highlighting my achievements and latest photograph. They had attached a pamphlet showing color pictures of some people receiving such awards. There was description of the Society too. I read the details and found that amongst the many objectives of the Society, the following was included. 1.To enroll members throughout the world among people of Indian origin. Recipients of honor will be members of the Society. 2.To collect a most reasonable delegate fee from the Awardee, in order to raise the necessary funds. The delegate fee, however, is strictly voluntary and no delegate is under any obligation to pay. 3.The Society reserves the right to present or reject the Award even after selection of the candidate without assigning any reason whatsoever, without being answerable to anyone. I discovered subsequently that many of our staff members had received this letter. I had received similar letters in the past, but the award had not been only for women at that time. It seemed they did not know me or anyone else in my department. They thought I was a woman! They probably got faculty names from some source like our website, and sent us letters. They had not selected us for the award based on our achievements, because they did not know the achievements. They wanted us to tell them about our achievements. As I saw it, I had to pay membership fee so that I would be eligible to receive the award. Then I would pay the delegate fee to receive the award. It was not mandatory, but then they held the right to refuse the award. Perhaps if I did not pay the delegate fee, they might refuse to give me the award for no reason (though not that reason). Then I lost my membership fee. They had not specified how much the membership and delegate fees would be, not what the award would be. If the award was a certificate, the fee being in money form I would make a net loss equal to the amount I paid, plus my travel and accommodation to the city where the function would be held. This letter achieved a few things. It told me how some Societies functioned. It also told me how one of our previous Deans had 48 awards, from people whose titles I had not even heard of.