International Fair

Hello!
I was going to give you a much-delayed update on what's been going on for the last couple of weeks, but nothing immediately sprang to mind when I sat down to write this. Although I've definitely done a lot, and a lot of it has had a huge impact or been really fun; these kind of things happen all the time, and so once they're over, you start to look to the next thing. So I thought instead I'd tell you a bit about the current event, and how amazing it is.

During events at which we have participants from more than one country, we host an International Fair. This hasn't happened for a while, as the last 2 events only had UK participants. I also missed most of the first one, as it was my day off and I was out at Oktoberfest. SO - I was really excited for yesterday's International Fair, because we have representatives from 10 countries here for the seminar. Part of the reason for this is that we offer bursaries for people to be able to come to seminars; applications must demonstrate why they want to come and how the issue is important or significant in their personal or guiding lives.

We also ask participants to complete 'pre event tasks' which, this time, required a story or presentation of their personal knowledge/ experience of HIV/AIDS, and also a presentation of what their MO (Member Organisation of WAGGGS eg. Girlguiding UK) or an NGO in their country was doing in the area of HIV/AIDS. I ran two sessions yesterday; the first alongside Jen and about WAGGGS' definition of Advocacy (we influence people to take decisions that will improve our lives and the lives of others by educating, speaking out or doing); and the second with Jessica which introduced the MDGs and began to focus thoughts on MDG6 - Combat HIV/AIDS, Malaria and other diseases. This session was also their chance to share their personal stories about HIV/AIDS, and it was really interesting to mill around the groups and hear some of their knowledge. We have people here with medical knowledge, personal knowledge of people who have or are living with HIV or AIDS, and also people who told of the efforts they're making with organisations at home to stop old traditions which are violent to women and also spread the disease.

Although yesterday was technically the second day, it was the first day that we focused on the seminar topic; Saturday featured all the usual Sangam-orientation sessions such as tours and rules etc. Even though it's arguably harder work and more stressful that one of our 'less serious' events, I'm really enjoying it so far, and the reason for that is the participants and their attitude to this opportunity. They are clearly very grateful to be here, and also all very determined young women. They also love to learn, and have been sharing cultural ideas and information from the start. A couple of nights ago Net and I walked past the dining room at the end of the day to hear the Indian girls teaching the South Africans how to count to 10 in Hindi! When some of them climbed the water tower with me yesterday at 7am, they began to sing "I believe I can fly" from the top and were whooping with excitement.

This excitement and cultural sharing brings me nicely around again to my main topic of this post; International Fair. It was awesome. We invite each person to bring their national costume and perform a dance or song, and to present their country to everyone else however they see fit. We had over an hour of presentations, and I took some pictures so that you, too, could share in the wonderful diversity that I'm experiencing here:

Nigeria:

Madagascar:

 Burundi:

 South Africa:

India (1):

Canada (a 'scuff'):

India (2):

 Australia (Waltzing Matilda!):

 Bangladesh:

Ukraine (sharing gifts):

The presentation from Ukraine was a video about the richness and diversity of the country. While watching it I thought the style looked worryingly familiar, and it was! A Eurovision video! It was fun.

We also have a participant here from Costa Rica; she also shared a video with us about her country. It was in Spanish, so she stood and translated it all for us. It was awesome. Costa Rica has crawled up the list of places I want to go...!

So there you have it. I'm now surrounded by people from 16 different countries when you count all our guests, the staff, and the fact that one of the South African representatives is actually Zimbabwean! I'm really enjoying it, and even though we're working on some tough topics, I know the rest of the week is going to be excellent and fun as well. I'll  do my best to fill you in when it's all over!

TTFN