SANGAM COMES TO NEWCASTLE
 



This year to celebrate Thinking Day we held an Indian themed evening for the whole of Newcastle South District.  We used the Sangam activity pack as our starting point for the planning but it soon became apparent that between the five of our planning the event we knew enough people to make this a really special night.  All we needed were friends.
A church hall was transformed with the help of bunting, pictures of elephants and an eight foot long Indian Flag into Sangam for the evening. The invitation asked girls to come in Indian costume if possible which all set the scene.
 We started off by explaining to everyone the importance of Thinking Day and why we were all gathered together ,  to the one hundred rainbows, brownies and guides who had come to join the celebration.  We then listened to the experiences of a guider (a friend of a friend) who had visited Sangam .  As well as listening to the talk afterwards the girls could visit our Sangam room to learn how to dress in a sari, look at the photos and souvenirs from Sangam and had time to chat about what India is like.
A friend of a friend of a guider sells Indian food for a living and we were able to offer all the girls four different curries, onion bhajis and poppdums.  A few of the girls found the food a bit spicy but everyone entered into the request to try something new.
Whilst we were eating, some of the girls were preparing a Rangoli trefoil which was presented at the end of the evening to our District Commissioner who is ending her term shortly.
Another friend of a friend of a guider teaches Bollywood dancing and managed to get all the girls dancing to Indian music and going in almost the same direction, at almost the same time but more importantly, smiling as they did so.
We raised over £180 to send to Sangam, learned more about one of our World Centres and what opportunities there are for girls internationally and had an evening of eating, dancing and having fun with your friends, a perfect Thinking Day.