September 15, 2015; Global Post.
On 12th September 2015; Saturday afternoon, the Bhutanese Legacy Youth Club (BLYC) successfully hosted the first Teej Special event in Fort Worth Texas in the Bhutanese Community Center of Fort Worth Texas. The special attractions of the event were the Teej related special songs and dances performed by Bhutanese Nepali women, Teej festival special food, costumes and musical recreations, including Bhutanese-Nepali literature, and volunteer appreciations.
The event was hosted in the occasion of Haritalika Teej, a Hindu festival celebrated during Shukla Paksha Tritiya of Bhadrapada month. In Hindu religion, Haritalika Teej comes one month after Hariyali Teej and most of the time celebrated one day before Ganesh Chaturthi. During Haritalika Teej women used to worship Lord Shiva and Goddess Parvati. It has its historical and religious importance, and nowadays it has become more cultural tradition rather than religious activities among the Bhutanese, Nepalese and North Indian women.
The coordinator of the Bhutanese Community Center Madhav Ghimire said, “The event of September 12 became so colorful, entertaining, and blessed by the grace of lord, that everybody present in the occasion enjoyed in their full.” All the women who participated in the Teej special event were in typical Nepali traditional dresses and ornaments including sari, cholo, mangalsutra, tillari, sirbandi, and other traditional ornaments.
According to their Chief Adviser and the President of Global Bhutanese Literary Organization (GBLO) Mr. Denzome Rai, the ‘Bhtanese Community Center’ is a meeting point of the Bhutanese Nepali communities in Fort Worth, where community based programs will be initiated by the BLYC and the GBLO Texas with a mission: ‘Bringing community together, introducing innovation, and building better communities…’ Kamal Karki – the Chief Treasurer of the Community Center added, “And this event was one of its mission activities as it has initiated different many united projects and programs in our communities through this community center”. He said, “This kind of Teej festival celebration is done for the first time in Fort Worth Texas, and we are much happy on making it a big success. Like this, we will be organizing different many events and programs as per occasions and public needs, simultaneously with our regular service programs”.
The Bhutanese Community Center, with the initiation of Bhutanese Legacy Youth Club has established a community empowering cooperative program, ‘ShobCo’ to support and finance the community activities and empowerments. According to the President Santa Lama, the center will be operating ESL, Civic (Citizenship), and Nepali language classes from the month of September 2015 in coordination with the Global Bhutanese Literary Organization Texas Chapter. The vice president of the club, A K Rana Sampang said, “We will be providing family assisting and empowering multiple programs and services through the Community Center, such as: employment development, resume development and application assistances, official and benefits application assistances including food stamps, Medicaid, green card etc. applications, transportation assistances, different kinds of trainings and workshops, including social sensitizations and awareness programs.” Those are big dream, and let us hope they will get great continuous support and involvement from the community and the people including sponsors and donors.
