Hi Everyone,

I hope you’ve all had a Happy Diwali and are looking forward to the Christmas festive period; even with the tier 4 lockdowns in place. There have been a few updates going on in our community and I’d like to take the time inform you all about them.

Collecting Donations for Keech Hospice Care

Each year members of our community donate their time to go out with Keech Hospice Care along with Smiley Sam to collect donations for the public. This usually involves knocking from door to door with Santa whilst meeting and greeting those that answer the door. Lots of people look forward to this and some save up all year to give. Due to the current circumstances, we’ve not been able to help this year as a lot of those who help are vulnerable or live with someone who is. Instead, what we’ve done is setup a JustGiving page to help collect donations for them.
If you could be kind enough to help by donating whatever you can; we aren’t asking for much, just whatever you can spare.

https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/spaluton-for-keech

COVID-19 Survey

The Shree Prajapati Association UK in partnership with all Hindu organisations want to understand the impact of the COVID-19 on Hindu communities in the UK. So could you please complete the survey linked below and pass it on to your friends and family to do the same.

https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/DNQ5SL8

NB. the Survey closes on 15th January 2021.

Sandesh 2020 – I think you’re on mute!

I’m part of the team who works on the Sandesh and this year even though we thought it might not go ahead, it did, with even more content than we thought we’d get.

Please take the time to read it as there are some very interesting articles in there ranging from first line doctors to people who have dealt with loss.

https://www.yumpu.com/en/document/read/65130365/spa-uk-sandesh-volume-45-2020

SPA UK Talent Show

Some members of our community have taken the initiative to hold a talent show for everyone as we’ve not been able to hold our regular annual events, please take a minute to read the following message from them:
As some of you are aware we are planning a U.K. wide talent show for all our branches in March 2021 on zoom. The idea is for branches to submit 1-2 high quality items (preferably encouraging our younger members to participate) as video recordings in January and we will pull together the overall show from those videos.

We are looking for: 1. Singing with musical instruments (bhajans/filmy songs/geet etc), 2. Performance on musical instruments at a high music grade (piano/violin/guitars etc), 3. Dances, 4. Garbas, 5. Magic show?, 6. Story telling in Gujarati?, 7. Jokes, Other talent items welcome

I look forward to your support 🙏

Thanks, Piyush Mistry (Birmingham).

If you’d be interested in taking part, please contact me at lutonspa@gmail.com so I can pass your information over to the team managing the event.

Lastly, I’d like to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year and hope to see each and every one of you in 2021 (after the vaccines have been distributed).

Thank you,
Arun.