Adovcacy Seminar

Well we're onto Day 4 of the advocacy seminar now, and happy days - today is my day off! How do you spend your first day off in India? Relaxing, sitting by the pool reading, having a REALLY long shower, and updating your blog - sounds about right! I'm here for 3.5 months and have plenty of time to explore, and it's mental in the city at the minute as it's Ganesh Festival, so I think I'll hang out in the peace and quiet of Sangam, and explore when life calms down :) 

So, what's been going on? I know you're all wondering! 

Well...

Day 1 of Advocacy Seminar

Everyone arrived, and we started the seminar with a flag ceremony where we brought in all the flags from the countries represented here at Sangam currently. We have... UK, Canada, USA, Oz, Mexico, Sweden, Rwanda, Burundi, Tanzania, India, and I think another African country which I've forgotten... Massive diversity going on right now! There's also Malaysia on the staff. After the flag ceremony, we had lots of intro to Sangam stuff - house rules, a tour of Sangam, a neighbourhood walk, event briefing, that kind of thing. 

And in the evening, we had the beautiful welcome ceremony, which I attended when I came in 2006. It's a traditional thing that's been going on for 40 years, with a mixture of Girlguiding and Indian traditions and it's just a fantastic experience, and a lovely way to end the day!

Day 2 of Advocacy Seminar

Day 2 was filled with seminar sessions - introduction to advocacy, introduction to the MDGs, (Millennium Development Goals), introduction to each other, and what they get up to in their own countries... a lot of that sort of thing. It was a really good day, and I think everyone enjoyed it :) It was a bit mental for me, as I was shadowing Sophie, who was helping at 3 of the sessions, and doing meal duty and her friends were arriving! But I love having loads to do, so it was awesome sauce, as Jill would say! 

Day 3 of Advocacy Seminar

Yesterday was a completely different day to the day before - We did lots of Sangam activities, so in the morning we went to Laxmi Road, which is the very heart of Pune, a really old road, with lots of traditional Indian shops, and market stalls. As it's Ganesh Festival which is MASSIVE in Pune, it was very crowded, but we all managed to stay together. The participants had a vegetable challenge in the market, they were given the name of a vegetable in Hindi (e.g. Gobi) and they had to go and buy it, with no idea what they were buying! With lots of asking around, and finding an Indian who can also speak a bit of English, it's not too bad! After this we went to a museum which was all in Hindi, but had some really pretty windows were you could look out onto the streets - it was worth going into it for that! Then we headed to a sari shop, and I bought a new sari :D Claire and I have almost matching Saris.. not because we wanted matching ones, but because we both happened to like the same one! So I have a dark blue sari, with red blouse, and Claire has the reverse! We are going to look AWESOME :P The tailors came to measure us up later in the day, and we'll have them back in a couple of days!! WOOOOP :) 

Yesterday we also had a preparation session for today - the participants are currently out at one of Sangam's three community partners. But more excitingly yesterday finished with our international faire, with some presentations from a variety of countries, and lots of sweets from all over the place!

I slept SO well last night after all of that yesterday! Feeling much more alive, alert, awake than I was yesterday, but just as enthusiastic!