SPA Luton Christmas Update 2020

By Arun in Charity, Events, News, Newsletters

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.

Dinner Dance 2019, Newsletter 25 and SPA ITF

By Arun in Charity, Dinner Dance, Newsletters

Hi Everyone,

Following the completion of our successful Bhajan Bhojan programme last month, we now have our Dinner Dance coming up. Please take a look at our flyer and if you want tickets, get in touch with the reps mentioned.

We’ve also attached our Newsletter for our bi-annual update, so give that a read as well. It’s fully loaded with everything we’ve been up to and what’s coming up!

Finally, SPA (UK) has chosen the SPA ITF as their charity of the year. The attached document contains an English flyer and Gujarati flyer, so please show this to everyone to raise awareness as to what and who the SPA ITF helps out.

Thanks!

Download the Dinner Dance 2019, Newsletter 25 and SPAITF Document.

Ashok and Hema Mistry, 100 mile hike through the West Highlands

By Arun in Charity

We have a local Luton couple – Ashok and Hema Mistry that are looking to go hiking along the West Highland Way in Scotland to raise funds for two hospices. These are St Luke’s Hospice and Keech Hospice care.

The hike is 100 miles starting just north of Glasgow and takes them through a variety of forestry trails seeing some amazing landscapes in four days of strenuous trekking and finally ending at Fort Williams in the shadow of Ben Nevis, the highest mountain in the UK.

The trip is fully self funded and all your donations will be divided between these two hospices.

Please click on the link below, read their story and donate to the cause.

https://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/AshokHems

Cheque Presentation to Luton and Dunstable Hospital

By Arun in Charity

On Monday 24th December 2018, after having several successful events throughout the year we made a donation to the Luton and Dunstable Hospital towards their Helipad Appeal. We were informed on the day that the Helipad would be state of the art and centrally located being directly connected to all the emergency departments via it’s own new lift shaft. This facility would also allow air ambulance crews to ferry patients from a scene to the hospital multiple times in quick succession giving patients the best possible chances for recovery.

For more information, visit this link www.ldh.nhs.uk/get-involved/helipad-appeal.

Post Christmas Round Up

By Arun in Bhajan Bhojan, Charity, Dinner Dance, Evening Events, Events, Gents Night

We’ve been quiet for little while, busy with our most recent events. This time of year gets hectic for all of us. Here is a quick round up of what we’ve been up to since our last update.

Bhajan Bhojan

Sunday 7th October 2018

Our Annual Bhajan Bhojan programme was held on the 7th October and we had the Shree Sanatan Bhajan Mandel from Wembley performing at our event. We’d like to thank all the main donors for their contributions towards the Hall Hire, Food and Mandel. This year we’d chosen the Luton and Dunstable Hospital as the charity we’d like to contribute towards.

Once again this event was well supported from our community in the surrounding Herts, Beds and Bucks along with the main donors and their families. We had help from the local ladies with the cooking and would like to give them a big thank you. To Kusumben, another thank you for donating the flowers arrangements and haars for the Stapnaa.

20th Anniversary Dinner Dance

Saturday 17th November 2018

Firstly, I would like to thank all Committee Members and Volunteers in making our Annual Dinner Dance a very big success. No matter how much input the members and volunteers make, it makes all the difference in making our events successful.

We held our Annual Dinner Dance on Saturday 17th November and this year was our 20th Anniversary since the branch was reformed. This time we wanted to do something a little different from what we normally do. We had a Photo Booth, a Table Magician and DJ (Up-Front Sounds from Leicester). Our outstanding prized Tombola stand was also there too.

This event was free to all Prajapati’s in the Herts, Beds and Bucks area and we had a massive turn out.

Our vegetarian catering came from Leicester and was collected by our committee members Pravinbhai and Thakorbhai. A big thank you to them for making the journey and to Anilbhai for making the return trip. The non-veg was Boneless Chicken and it was cooked by Ashockbhai and team at home, everyone enjoyed it. It was a big hit!

A big Thank You to Window Parts Limited who donated the 5 main raffle prizes, as they’ve been donating for the past several years. As this was a big celebration we decided to order a celebratory Cake for everyone to share. This went down extremely well and only one slice was left at the end, and even that was quickly polish off.

The whole evening was amazing, the guests had an awesome time and there was great entertainment throughout the night.

Lastly I’d like to give a big thank you to everyone that helped with the success of our event.

Thank you,
Anilbhai.

Gents Night

Saturday 1st December 2018

Gents night this year was at Purple Flame in Stanmore, London. We had over 30 people in attendance. We were situated over 2 sections which made it a little difficult to speak to everyone throughout the night, but in general everyone loved it! There weren’t too many new faces this time, but this event is almost an instant sellout each time we book, with people asking long in advance if they can attend.

Smiley Sam

Saturday 8th December 2018

Each year some of our committee along with members from the community volunteer one evening in December to help raise funds for our local Keech Cottage Hospice. This year we covered the Strathmore Avenue area in Luton, which had a lot of hills. We managed to get around within a few hours even with a smaller team and with all the climbing we all managed to stay nice and warm! If you’d like to take part, the more the merrier and all the effort goes towards a great local cause. Here is a first hand account from Bhavikaben from our youth team:

‘It was my first time being able to join in the Smiley Sam Collection, and it was a great experience. Even though the evening was cold, it was great seeing the reaction from the public as many had been waiting all year for the float to come around, especially the children who had waiting to have their photo taken with Santa. I would thoroughly recommend everybody take part at least once as it is an unique event to experience.’

Ladies Night

Saturday 15th December 2018

The venue of choice this time was K’s Bar and Restaurant in the Dunstable. It was a new venue for us, and we had some great food with good service. Everyone that attended enjoyed themselves, and it was good see some of the younger generation coming along to support us.

Christmas Drinks

Saturday 22nd December 2018

Each year we have a small get together at our local pub just before Christmas. There was a fair turnout this time with some of the ladies coming along as well. The pub was quite busy with several other celebrations going on at the same time, but it all added to the atmosphere. If you want to come along next year we usually congregate on the last Saturday before Christmas, but check with other committee members incase there has been a change of timing.

Keep an eye out on the website for photos from all these events.

Smiley Sam 2017

By Arun in Charity

Each year around Christmas for the last few years we’ve been going out with the good folk at Keech Hospice to help them raise money for their amazing cause. Here is what some of our helpers received last year:

If you’d like to help, get in touch with us around October November time as the time slots available fill up quite quickly!!