Goenkars !
After writing to many Goans in Australia and New Zealand for three years , I received a positive response from Oscar Lobo who in his individual capacity agreed to shoulder the responsibility of organising the Festival for WORLD GOA DAY this year in Melbourne , Australia. Oscar Lobo is now the official Co-ordinator for WORLD GOA DAY in Melbourne, Australia Oscar is no new comer to Goan Festivals, he has successfully organised functions in the Middle East, New Zealand and now in Australia. When given the opportunity of organising this event he did not hesitate to embark on this project after an exhange of a few emails between us, he formed his TEAM , organised a hall and printed the tickets , all this in a matter of a month or so. I believe that three hundred and eighty tickets were sold within a few weeks ! All we need in our Community is good leadership and the Goan * spirit * whatever that may be ! My congratulations , to the Goans of Australia , you too have made us PROUD ! and SHOWN that you CARE , for Goa and Goans everywhere. Oscar sends his message to GOANS world wide on this occassion , It is my pleasure to now share it with the many Goan Communities around the world. VIVA GOA , VIVA GOANS wherever they may be. rene barreto [EMAIL PROTECTED] ------------------------------------------------------ The Message ----------------------- Goans of Australia, ----------------------- Melbourne , Australia . Dear fellow Goan Brothers, Sisters, Boys and Girls I have pleasure in informing you all that our GOADAY, GOENCHO DIS, DIA DE GOA is scheduled to take place on 16 August 2003 in Melbourne. At the outset I must acknowledge that without the support of my team - Jude and Sarojini D'sa, Mario & Cherylane Carvalho and Newton Marques this event would not have shaped as much as I expected. In a nutshell, my team has shown that Goans can keep their spirits up without pouring spirits down! I am overwhelmed with the response from Goans in Melbourne - a full house in three weeks time - That's called togetherness. The definition of a Community is: A social group having a common interest, similarity or identity. In order to live up to the definition and for any community to advance one needs to show TOGETHERNESS along with Understanding , Love and Friendship. There should be no compromise on this for the success of any dynamic community. Man has reached the moon and came back and we find troublesome and give many excuses to contribute some of our time towards the betterment of our community. We have conquered outer space but not our inner space. We have so many talents, education, exposure to life and yet our community is split over few basic misconceptions. On this World Goa Day, I would urge all goans wherever they are, to leave aside all those black spots - like knee jerk reactions , caste system , spanners at work and start working together by building retirement villages for our dearly beloved retired Goans, own social clubs and total support for our young goan generation. The truth will set us free. We need to set good examples to the young ones (who are also growing in another culture in our adopted country) and groom them to keep our culture, music, cusine, literature, history and above all our Konkani language alive. If we should abandon this - our goan identity will have a natural demise. I remember 15 years ago a community in one of our Indian States (who are now in numbers on our Goan shores) referred all Goans as 'ABC' ( ayah, buttler, cooks) they underestimated us in our capacity to make make things happen and that we were not so caring to our community as they are! Its one thing to have a sentimental vein about being a Goan and its other thing altogether to work cohesively with one another to keep our culture alive. On World Goa Day I salute all those who are already working towards celebrating Goa and Goans and call upon all our globe trotter Goans to join hands - as many hands make work light. Mog ani bessao assundhi to GOA and GOANS. OSCAR C. LOBO , CO-ORDINATOR , WORLD GOA DAY , MELBOURNE , AUSTRALIA [EMAIL PROTECTED] www.goaday.com ########################################################################## # Send submissions for Goanet to [EMAIL PROTECTED] # # PLEASE remember to stay on-topic (related to Goa), and avoid top-posts # # More details on Goanet at http://joingoanet.shorturl.com/ # # Please keep your discussion/tone polite, to reflect respect to others # ##########################################################################
