GAA Voice - Your Community, Your voice!

There are many things that make a community great, some people say it’s because of the people; others say it’s because of these social bond it creates at community events, whatever the reason we all feel a sense of belonging when we are in a community.

Every community has its successes, take our Mochi Community, for years we have built a strong and dedicated base for all surti mochi’s in the Leicester area, we held many events, won many sporting awards and now with the hard work of our trustees and committee leaders we are in development of a brand new hall.

Despite all our greatest achievements we have seen our community numbers slowly dwindle. It is becoming more apparent that the people that once made our community thrive are no longer coming to our hall and social events. It is neither for want nor commitment from our people but as varied as the reasons maybe, there is a need for change from within. It is becoming clear that we need to work harder for our community and not rest on our successes. We need to appeal to a wider audience, children, youth, women and men.

There are a number of committee members that realise this and want more for the community, we want change in a way that provides more for our community whether they are young or old. We want to communicate more clearly with our members about what is happening within our community, what projects we are working on, what events we should run. We want to give our community its voice back!

What is GAA Voice
Essentially it is a forum or drop in session which we a looking to set up on Friday evenings. Members of the community can come to our hall and talk to us about any questions or concerns they have. We want our members to have an input in all events we hold and we want to hear about new ideas which help our community evolve and grow.

As well as drop in sessions we are also looking to run Gujarati lessons for our youth, car boot sales in our car park and hall, youth club, fashion shows, lunchon clubs, ladies night as well as many other events but would like you advice, involvement and ideas.

Who’s involved
The idea of the GAA voice came about from a meeting between Kokila Parmar, Kishor Gohil, Hitesh Parmar & Mehul Solanki who all felt that our samaj intention to communicate with our members was not being done in an efficient and effective manner. They felt the need to involve the community more and came up with the idea of a drop in session for members to find out information, raise concerns and help out with new community projects. After canvassing friends and family about various ideas the feedback they received was very positive, everyone felt that the samaj needs to evolve and change however samaj members either didn’t know who to go to in order to raise their concerns or felt that they didn’t wish to speak out against community leaders

It was agreed that they should be the people that brings the community interest into the committee meetings, a voice of the community with the intention to help evolve the samaj further. With the help of Prakash Rathod and the GAA Committee members we have managed to produce our first newsletter which we hope will grow as the GAA Voice takes off.

If you have an idea or suggestion regarding our community or a concern in which you wish to raise, please come along and use your voice and together we can build a more rewarding community for this generation and the generation to come