Building community made easy

Four women with an idea, two forty minute meetings, a few telephone calls made and emails sent. That was all it took to create a 'Chand Raat' community event last Saturday for more than a hundred women and children at Highfield Community Garden in Keighley.


It was a lesson in how working in partnership and making use of each others networks can make things happen quickly and leave everyone feeling ' oh, that was easy!'. 


What are your tips for making community events 'easy'?


A Chand Raat event was new to the women from the local church, who had partnered with the local community centre to put on the event. 


For anyone else who would like to know about Chaand Raat, Wikipedia says:

'Chaand Raat (Bengali: চাঁদ রাত , Hindi: चाँद रात, Urdu: چاند رات literally, Night of the Moon) is a Hindi, Urdu and Bengali locution used inPakistan, India and Bangladesh for the eve of the Muslim festival of Eid ul-Fitr; it can also mean a night with a full moon.

Chaand Raat is a time of celebration when families and friends gather in open areas at the end of the last day of Ramadan to spot the new moon, which signals the arrival of the Islamic month of Shawwal and the day of Eid. Once the moon is sighted, people wish each otherChaand Raat Mubarak ("Have a blessed night of the new moon") or Eid Mubarak ("Blessings of the Eid day"). Women and girls decorate their hands with mehndi (henna), and people prepare desserts for the next day of Eid and do the last round of shopping.

City streets have a festive look, and brightly decorated malls and markets remain open late into the night.^[1] Chaand Raat is celebrated festively and passionately by Muslims (and occasionally non-Muslims as well) all over South Asia, and in socio-cultural significance, this night is comparable to Christmas Eve in Christian nations.