On June 21st, Sapna NYC held a Falgun Utsav celebration for our community with over 100 women. Falgun marks the return of Spring in Bengal. As many of our year-long classes wrap up and we welcome the warm months of New York summer, this event celebrated the progress made by the women at Sapna in the Spring semester. Held at Al-Aqsa Party Hall in the Bronx, the afternoon involved games, performances, and an abundance of shared joy.

With women from Sapna’s various classes and initiatives coming together at this celebration, we started the event with an icebreaker game of human scavenger hunt. We read prompts like “find a woman who has her own business” and “find a woman from Dhaka” to help community members meet new people as they tried to find someone who matched the prompt. The women discovered that they have so many special, shared experiences with others in our community.

This emphasis on inclusivity and shared experiences was a highlight for many of our community members. One woman described how this was her first time at a women-centric gathering. Looking around at the party, she primarily saw South Asian women in cultural clothing and felt a sense of belonging that she hadn’t felt in a long time outside of her home country of Bangladesh. Another woman from our special needs circle described how seeing children with special needs playing in the banquet hall made her feel less alone about her own child with special needs. 

Fostering this sense of belonging is especially important for our community members, many of whom feel isolated in New York after leaving behind the strong social networks in their home countries. This loneliness not only can lead to increased depression, but also leaves them more vulnerable to abuse or exploitation. Sapna’s community events and programs strive to recreate those lost social networks, build community, and help all of our women reclaim joy in their lives. This inclusivity and the ability to find comfort and joy within our community is what makes our Falgun Utsav, and Sapna as a whole, so special.

The party was also a chance for Sapna’s staff members to connect with the community. Arpita Chatterjee, Sapna’s Mental Health Counselor, describes how much of her work is virtual in order to include clients in different boroughs who are referred from a variety of sources including hospitals, shelters, the court system, and Child Protection Services, to name a few. 

For Arpita, events like Falgun Utsav offer opportunities to meet many of her clients for the first time. “It is thrilling”, she says. “Especially given the deeply personal moments we share in mental health work, seeing them in a more relaxed setting enjoying themselves is gratifying, to say the least.” 

As Arpita describes, having the space to relax and be playful can be a liberating experience. Highlights of the night were the vocal performances by Sapna’s community members, many of whom had been coming into the Sapna office to practice leading up to the celebration. Our staff performance was especially treasured by community members and highly anticipated as well! We were grateful to share this glimpse into our community with partners and special guests Senator Nathalia Fernandez, Nicole Potes from the office of NYC Council Majority Leader Amanda Farias, and the Zakat Foundation.

Through moments of music and culture, our Falgun Utsav celebration brought us closer to our community members and reminded us of Sapna’s mission: to cultivate a joyful and supportive community of South Asian women in the Bronx.