"I do so much research," she says.

Any time her daughter, Nandini, or her son, Samir—both Harker School students—were interested in something she would look into it. And when one of her friends needed the same kind of information, they found themselves going to Datta because she was so reliable in responding. Each time she found herself talking to another parent she discovered she was learning something else, like when it was time to register kids for soccer, or which pediatrician was a good doctor, or whom to call for music lessons.

Almaden Valley needed a central bulletin board, Datta thought; a place where parents can share experiences, opinions, and information about upcoming events. It took her almost two years to put it all together, but with a little help from a few other parents, Datta launched a virtual bulletin board for her Almaden neighbors called Parent 2 Parent Exchange or P2P-Xchange.com.

Datta, an unemployed computer engineer and 10-year resident of the valley, built the webpage to be user-friendly and sorted the categories into 12 sections: Music; sports; theatre and talent auditions; visual arts; robotics; summer camps; tutors and SAT help; household referrals; book and movie reviews; chess and math leagues or classes; health or doctor referrals; and a guest-posted information center that Datta will monitor.

Under movie reviews, her friend Sushma Roy wrote up a number of reviews separated into "Hollywood" and "Bollywood" categories, rating them to their appropriateness for viewing by children. There in the Hollywood section, parents can find some very new DVD releases, such as 50 First Dates, and some not as new but still recent releases, such as Spider Man and Bend It Like Beckham. The Bollywood offerings range from Bawarchi to Gol Maal to Munna Bhai.

And now that her native India and neighboring countries have been struck by the tsunami disaster, she's added a link where people can find out more about making donations to the relief effort. She has pledged to raise $1,000 to be given to help the victims of the flooding and earthquake on behalf of P2P and the Almaden community.

Hoping to document the generosity of the Almaden community, she wants people to let her know if they've given a donation, even if it does not go through the P2P website.

The money collected through P2P will go to the Indian Community Center in Milpitas, which in turn will send the money on to Indian tsunami victims, Datta said.

Datta has more energy than she knows how to use. One of her passions—of which she says she has two, the other being children—is community involvement. So it comes as no surprise that the tsunami relief fund is not her first charitable effort. Information about Promise World Wide, a non-profit organization she co-founded with her friend, Jayu Basu of Los Gatos, can also be found on the Also P2P website.

As women of privilege watching their daughters enjoy education and opportunities some women in their homeland would never know, Datta and Basu decided to form an organization that would provide education and computer literacy to underprivileged women in Atghara, a poor village in Calcutta, India.

The two started by helping five girls and soon it grew to 13 in 2002. Promise World Wide now supports the education and self-reliance learning of 50 children and Datta and Basu are working on collecting donations that would allow them to build a new school there.

Datta says that their intention of helping only girls, who are often subjected to forced submission, soon gave way when they learned that the brothers of some of the female students getting educated through their program were so enthralled with what their sisters were learning, Datta and Basu couldn't deny them just because they were boys, she says.

On the P2P website, Datta provides a brief description of Promise World Wide and a link to that website. But just under that entry is another of Datta's endeavors—Bay Area Prbasi, still another non-profit group in which she is involved.

Prbasi promotes awareness and involvement in the Bengali culture. It also provides links to organizations devoted to things such as preventing medical malpractice in India and providing arsenic safe drinking water in affected villages of West Bengal, India.

Through P2P, a website Datta hopes will get used by her neighbors, Datta takes you through Almaden Valley, across the world and back.