Uk Goan Festival London
YouTube Videos
http://www.youtube.com/user/LucyUKGoa/videos

Click on image

Goan Association Of Ealing Song 2012
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1_DKXjwVBk

Click image to listen

Our Lady predicted many of the Church’s woes in the 1600s
Source Catholicherald.co.uk | By William Oddie on Thursday, 26 July 2012

In apparitions to an abbess, Our Lady of Quito predicted the current malaise of the Church and of society with uncanny accuracy, but she also promises restoration.

But first, there would be a total corruption of morals in society; this would affect the Church, too

Posted on July 27, 2012, Quito: I was leafing through the current issue of The Flock, the newsletter of Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice when I came across an article by the redoubtable Mrs Daphne McLeod about Our Lady of Quito—otherwise known as Our Lady of Good Success—who appeared several times to Mother Mariana, Abbess of the convent of the Immaculate Conception in Quito, Ecuador, at the end of the sixteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth centuries.

On one of these occasions, she made a particularly remarkable prophecy. You will see why—knowing Mrs McLeod’s passionate concern for the religious education of our children, and her repeated warnings over the years about the consequences of the denatured and insubstantial superficiality of what they are now fed as RE—she draws our attention in The Flock to this particular apparition of Our Lady.

My source for what follows is an admirable and extremely useful site, snappily entitled “Apparitions and Shrines of the Blessed Virgin Mary which have been approved by legitimate Church Authority”.

Early in the morning of January 21, 1610, the Archangels St. Michael, St. Gabriel and St. Raphael appeared to Mother Mariana. Then Our Lady appeared to her and predicted many things about our own times: this is part of what Mother Mariana afterwards related that she told her:

“…. I make it known to you that from the end of the 19th century and shortly after the middle of the 20th century…. the passions will erupt and there will be a total corruption of customs (morals)….

“They will focus principally on the children in order to sustain this general corruption. Woe to the children of these times! It will be difficult to receive the Sacrament of Baptism, and also that of Confirmation…

“As for the Sacrament of Matrimony… it will be attacked and deeply profaned… The Catholic spirit will rapidly decay; the precious light of the Faith will gradually be extinguished… Added to this will be the effects of secular education, which will be one reason for the dearth of priestly and religious vocations.

“The Sacrament of Holy Orders will be ridiculed, oppressed, and despised… The Devil will try to persecute the ministers of the Lord in every possible way; he will labor with cruel and subtle astuteness to deviate them from the spirit of their vocation and will corrupt many of them. These depraved priests, who will scandalize the Christian people, will make the hatred of bad Catholics and the enemies of the Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church fall upon all priests…

“Further, in these unhappy times, there will be unbridled luxury, which will ensnare the rest into sin and conquer innumerable frivolous souls, who will be lost. Innocence will almost no longer be found in children, nor modesty in women. In this supreme moment of need of the Church, the one who should speak will fall silent.”

In a subsequent apparition, Our Lady told Mother Mariana that these apparitions were not to become generally known until the twentieth century.

Source: Catholic Herald

Book Launch – “Go Beyond The Classroom”
Message from Nairobi - GOAN WELFARE SOCIETY

The GWS is very proud to announce that our very own member Mrs Maura Abranches has published a book on education "Go Beyond The Classroom".

Congratulations Maura for sharing your story with us, well done!

"Go Beyond The Classroom" is now available in bookstores.

There will be a book signing event at our World Goa Day celebrations on Sunday the 19th of August at the Goan Gymkhana.  Books can be purchased through M-pesa 0727 018 205 at ksh. 1000/-, details of delivery will be given to you after payment.

For those who cannot find the books in stores please contact Lily-Anne on 0724 479832 for a copy at Kshs 1,000/-

Bahrain Goans Newsletter

Newsletter for the Goans - by the Goans - of the Goans in Bahrain
July 2012 Issue Is Now Available Online.

Click on the image above or link below to read
https://sites.google.com/site/bahraingoans/xit-koddi---jul-2012

Deepa Mehta, Mira Nair bring Indian voices to Toronto film fest
http://www.southasiamail.com/mainnews.php?id=13048
By Nicole Sperling
 
Deepa Mehta and Mira Nair first met in a swimming pool in Amritsar, India, when they were children, not knowing at the time that they would become two of India's most influential filmmakers. Now the two women, who are eight years apart, will be coming to the Toronto International Film Festival in September to screen their films.

The festival announced this morning that it will host the world premiere of Mehta's "Midnight's Children," while Nair's "The Reluctant Fundamentalist" will make its North American debut at the event.

"Midnight's Children" centers on the journey of two newborns switched at birth at a Bombay hospital on the dawn of India's independence from Britain. "The Reluctant Fundamentalist" is an international political thriller that follows a young Pakistani man chasing corporate success on Wall Street who finds himself embroiled in a conflict of his American dream, a hostage crisis and the call of his homeland.

The films are very different, yet they share a lot in common. Both are based on literary works: "Midnight's Children" was originally a novel by Salman Rushdie (who also wrote the screenplay), while "Fundamentalist" is based on the bestselling novel by Pakistani writer Mohsin Hamid.

The two women shot the films about the same time, and both were forced to use India as a double for Pakistan after the country denied them visas to shoot there.

"Midnight's Children" is scheduled to be released in the U.S. in October, while "The Reluctant Fundamentalist," which will first open at the Venice Film Festival on Aug. 29 and stars Riz Ahmed, Kate Hudson, Kiefer Sutherland and Liev Schreiber, does not yet have a U.S. release date.

British "David" Takes On Billion-Dollar U.S. "Goliath" For Share of U.S.'s Growing Online Genealogy Market

• Findmypast.com launches into U.S. July 24; seeks to become go-to site for Americans of British and Irish ancestries

• World's second largest genealogy company takes on its biggest rival, with help of 1,000 unique record collections and 75% annual growth

SAN FRANCISCO, July 26, 2012 /CNW/ - Findmypast.com, a British-owned family history website, is launching this week into the growing U.S. genealogy market.

Findmypast is the flagship brand of brightsolid online publishing, a UK and world leader in online genealogy, with 18 million registered users across its family of sites, over a billion genealogical records dating back to 1200, and a growth rate last year of 75%.

Yet, findmypast.com enters the U.S. market in the role of David facing Goliath in the shape of ancestry.com, the overwhelming market leader and the world's largest genealogy company, with a market capitalization of a billion dollars plus.

"We're not used to thinking of ourselves as small", says Chris van der Kuyl, CEO of brightsolid, the world's second largest genealogy company. "Our ambitions are big and the launch of findmypast.com is a major market entry. The truth is, it's a growing market, with plenty of room for both of us."

The launch of findmypast.com will offer U.S. customers access to not just a wealth of U.S. genealogical records but also a vast overseas collection. The latter includes almost 1,000 unique British, Irish and Australian record collections, with some single collections containing 30 million records.

Findmypast.com is the new U.S. addition to a global network of findmypast websites - it joins existing findmypast sites in the UK, Ireland and Australia. Its launch, with the help of a separate U.S. team, follows growing global demand for findmypast's other sites, says van der Kuyl: "Last year, we had 4.5 million visits to findmypast.co.uk from other countries, led by the U.S., while 55% of findmypast Ireland visits came from outside Ireland."

Findmypast.com will enter the U.S. market, armed with the unique wealth of its British and Irish genealogical records, as well as its unrivalled ease of search technology and its more flexible payment options.

"We aim to become the go-to family history site, first for Americans of British and Irish descent, and eventually for all Americans", says van der Kuyl. Nearly a quarter of all Americans, by some estimates, have British ancestry.

SOURCE: Findmypast.com

For further information:
Contact: beth@bethcookpr.net
Brian Speckart +1-7146543415

‘Overcrowding to blame for Sacred Heart’s (Former Mombasa Goan School) poor results’
http://www.standardmedia.co.ke/?articleID=2000060775&pageNo=1
Updated Thursday, June 28 2012 | By Patrick Beja

Situated at the intersection between Archbishop Makarios and Liwatoni roads is the Sacred Heart school, Mombasa. We arrived at the Goan school recently during the feast of the sacred heart of Jesus.

Teachers told us they dedicate this day every year to prayer. A mass is presided over by priests within the school. The primary and secondary schools were established in 1932 by Goans to provide education to the community, which was then sending its children to boarding schools in Goa, India. In the process, many women were forced to relocate to Goa to take care of their children. This kept them away from their husbands and other family members working in Kenya.

The wind of political change in 1961, however, completely transformed the community school. Even the name had to be changed to Sacred Heart. The Africanisation programme and its uncertainty made many Indians leave the country. The community handed over the public school to the Catholic Church in Mombasa.

Crowded compound

“The Goan school has been a centre of excellence in the academic landscape because it had graduate teachers from Goa. Many of the students later trained in India and elsewhere and dominated the fields of law and medicine in Kenya,” says a member of the Goan community in Mombasa who preferred to remain anonymous.

Andrew Abreu, a Goan businessman and former student of the school, says the institution was once popular and attracted many students due to its association with the prominent Goan educationists.

Both the primary and secondary wings are burdened by the growing number of learners.

The school was born after the then Mombasa Liwali (ruler) Sir Ali bin Salim gave the Goan community land and laid the foundation stone for its construction on August 14, 1932.

At one point, the Portuguese funded the expansion of the school.

The primary section is teaming with 1,014 pupils while the secondary side has more than 600 students, all sharing a small compound.

“We have been struggling with the high population which has put a strain on furniture and other amenities. We urgently need to start a school feeding programme because about 300 of the pupils are orphans and cannot afford lunch,” the headmaster, George Ojiambo says.

The primary section recorded a mean score of 281 in last year’s Kenya Certificate of Primary Education examination. There are 31 teachers, 24 of them hired by the Teachers Service Commission.

The primary school excelled to the national level in music and a French coral verse in 2011. It has also performed exceptionally well in athletics in Mombasa County.

The high school wing has also performed well in extra curricular activities, especially athletics and music. The Sacred Heart High School principal, Veronica Marami says a lot has been done to restore its past glory.

She, however, says the compound is too crowded for the school to expand to four streams.

The mean score of the high school has dropped to a low of 3.5, translating to a D+.

Counselling sessions

“Girls and boys learn in separate classes to encourage concentration. They are happy that way. They are also more confident,” Ms Marami says. She says the separation has encouraged parents to bring in more girls as it has curbed boy-girl relationships.

Each teacher also has a family of about 15 children to counsel and mentor.

This, she says, leads to smooth flow of information from the students to the administration.

“Children are from different backgrounds and share their problems with the teachers nurturing them. In this system, we are able to counsel them without difficulties,” she adds.
Ms Marami says when she was posted to the school in 2010, she found out some students were taking advantage of the day school to report as late as 9am: “We introduced school assemblies every day instead of Monday and Friday only. As a result, the students now report on time. Absenteeism has also gone down drastically,” she says.

In addition to the family model counselling, the school has pastoral service where a priest is usually invited to talk to the students.

For Muslim students, a room has been provided at the school for prayers.

Ms Marami says the school caters for all categories of students including those from the streets. The head student, Joseph Muliro admits he was once a street boy. What the school stands for is summarised in its motto ‘Knowledge Enlightens’.

The history of Goans in Kenya is long and winding. It goes back as far as 1865 with the arrival and establishment of businesses in Mombasa by a Mr de Souza and other early arrivals.

Goans had trickled into East Africa at the time of the Portuguese rule but at the turn of the last century, there was a greater influx. They came to Kenya as sailors, cooks, tailors, railway employees and clerks.

They are associated with the construction of the Uganda Railway.

Prominent Goans included Dr ACL de Souza, Dr Ribeiro, JM Nazareth, Pio Gama Pinto, Joseph Murumbi and Fritz de Souza.

Mr Murumbi became Kenya’s vice-president.