By The Ripple Effect Team
The Ripple Effect launch event was a celebration of Black History Month at the Unity Centre. Volunteers from Eritrea, Sudan, Pakistan and Kurdistan provided food native to their home countries.
The food provided a wonderful array of aromas and flavours. So many different dishes, guests were almost overwhelmed by the choices available.
Entertainment in the afternoon was provided from some local Bollywood dancers who encouraged “willing volunteers” to get up and have a go themselves.
Over 40 community members attended the event that a fantastic party atmosphere by the end.
Here’s what people had to say;
“It was so good, so amazing. Nothing could be better; it was more than we expected”
“Thank you all. Enjoy. Food Very good”
“Will remember lasting”
“Seeing some new faces and cultures and languages. Dancing :D”
“Really enjoyed trying all the different foods and meeting people from different ethnic backgrounds”
“So lovely to try lots of new foods and puddings, beautiful flavours.
Everyone was so welcoming and friendly. Really enjoyed the Bollywood dancing too. Thank you for providing a great afternoon for everyone to come together. Really appreciate it. Thanks.”
“Really enjoyed trying lots of different, new foods that I never would have tried.
Really enjoyed the Bollywood dancing too.
Thank you, it’s been brilliant”
“Had a lovely afternoon, tried most of the different foods and met some wonderful people. Really enjoyed it. Thankyou”
“What a lovely afternoon, food lovely and people. Enjoyed the dancing. All the best to everybody. Thank you.”
What went well? There was lots of different enjoyable food to choose from.
What are you going to remember from today? Socialising with people of different ethnicity and walks of life that I otherwise might not have met.
Did anything surprise you? They accommodated someone with special dietary requirements
And anything else you would like to tell us. The event was very enjoyable, and we would recommend their events to anyone.
The learning from the event highlighted the need to have more consideration when working with people from the neurodiverse community especially around noise levels. When the dancing started there was no warning and some individuals found the noise levels to be too high.
It was also reported to us that there are more volunteers willing to share details about their background and food, so going forward we already have willing participants for a similar event.