BAV celebrates Dashain with cultural funfare
Bhutanese Association in Victoria hosted the Dashain-Tihar festival at Banksia Garden Community Centre, Broadmeadows, on October 13 that also marked the fifth year Bhutanese settlement in Victoria. The main objective of the program was to preserve our culture and let the young generation including small children know about the importance of festivals.
The program started with Durga Puja by enchanting mantra from the priest Mitra Lal Adhakari.
After Saraswati Regmi speech welcoming guests and audiences, young children opened the event by dance in a very popular song Dashain aayo to begin the formal program.
The program included dozens of cultural dances, songs, poems, gazals speeches and typical traditional dances like Sangani from the senior women and Balan from the senior men.
Addressing the function, BAV Chairperson outlined the objectives of the organisation as to serve the community on volunteer basis and promote and preserve culture through array of programs. He added, “We the Bhutanese were able to achieve lot of success regardless of difficulties and barriers like language, cultural differences and the system of the country”. He cited Bhutanese helping the Victorian Bushfire in 2009, Queensland flood victims in 2011 and fire victim in Bhutanese refugee camps in Nepal as instances of the community’s generosity towards humanitarian works.
He thanked Hume City Council for the musical festival funding. He also thanked all the guests for attending the program and to the community volunteers for making the program successful.
“Bhutanese Community is well settled in Australia and Council is ready to provide any sorts of support to the emerging community to uplift and bring them into the wider communities to this Multicultural Country”, said Mayor of Hume City Council who was also the Chief Guest of the show.
“I love to attend this type of cultural show which adds one more cultural to our nation,” said he.
BAV awarded with the Certificate of Appreciation to the community volunteers who gave their services in different sector like, social, IT, choreographing and many more throughout 2012. Mayor distributed the certificate encouraging and appreciating each volunteers for their service to the community.
The guests who attended the event were Nicki Bruce (NMIT Site Coordinator), Liz Harvey, (Policy and Planning Officer, Moreland City Council), Jeremiah Temple (Refugee Action Program Officer, Spectrum), Jaime De Loma-Osorio Ricon (Banksia Garden Community Centre).
The event also saw the performances by Nepalese community. Around 250 people including Bhutanese, Nepalese and wider Australian communities attended the event.
Community volunteers served free cultural food to the participants and guests.
The final and the excited part of the program was lottery draw where audience were awarded with first, second and third prizes.
Thakur Acharya and Meena Koirala were Masters of Ceremony of the function.