By The Ripple Effect Team
A celebration was held at the Unity Centre and had more than 100 residents, volunteers, friends, and family attended. Due to it being the October holidays, we did end up having more children than adults present which was great as the children got to understand what they were celebrating coming together with the rest of the community.
The adults got to learn about facts from different African countries and got to compete in a quiz for a chocolate surprise at the end. The Ripple Effect wanted to instigate conversations between people from diverse backgrounds, so we encouraged people to sit next to people they have not met before to a different background to themselves. We had some very universal questions which everyone could easily join in to express passion for the subjects being discussed.
The questions were:
1) What is your favourite food? and;
2) What is your favourite celebration and why? How do you celebrate it?
Visiting different tables, we could see people from different backgrounds sharing recipes of how they cook similar foods. One person of a white British background was describing how he would cook his curry in the oven and someone of a Pakistani heritage described making the same curry in a pot on the oven to which they surprised each other about the methods used. There was also a cross over of a specific dish called Biryani between someone of Pakistani heritage and someone on Kurdish heritage as they both had this dish in their cultures but made it slightly different to each other and so they were sharing their recipes and methods.
The children took part in colouring flags, games, and other activities.
There were some good conversations happening around the room. Upon entering the room, we asked people to fill out a pre survey and then a post survey after the activities and discussion to see how they felt.
After the quizzes and discussions, we all celebrated with some delicious food cooked by the Pakistani, Sudanese, and Eritrean communities. We also had ordered in Pizzas for the children.
We asked attendees to tell us about anything they will take away from this activity
“A meet for different people. For the kids there was activity. So, a great day for us.”
” Need to be involved with more community activity”
” Being open to talk to others and 1st to approach/break the ice”
” It’s been nice to speak to people from different culture and to see all the lovely costumes.”
” Meeting people from different cultures and a better understanding of their ways.”
” Trying food, different cultures and talking about it all as well”
” We all love food and celebrations. Community is tasty”
” Getting to know each other helps to build understanding, trust and respect.”
” Unity – The general feeling of everyone wanting to learn about cultures and religions.”
