Human Race 2010

Thank you to all our donors, we have met our fundraising goal.

One weekend, 250 players, 40 volunteers and over $80k raised. The Palmera team organised an Amazing Race style race around Sydney CBD and a night stay at Cockatoo Island. Teams fundraised to make the race easier on the day, the more money you raised the more money you had to bribe officials with.

Thank you to all our teams, volunteers and participants for your contribution to the amount raised!

Priya’s Surprise Birthday

Thank you to all our donors, we have met our fundraising goal.

Priya is a dear friend to all of us and her birthday is coming up on the 14th of May! So we thought the best way to honour Priya was to support one of the causes near to her heart!

COVID has hit the poorest in ways we cannot imagine, including in Countries like Sri Lanka. Palmera is a charity that does amazing work undertaking projects to develop communities and help them become self sufficient. Priya has been a supporter to Palmera for many years.

Join us and instead of a gift this year, let us give the gift of giving to help those in need.

But SHSSSHHH we want this to be a surprise for her on her birthday so please don’t mention this page to her.

Palmera is a tax-deductible, Australian Government accredited organisation that has been working tirelessly on the ground with these communities for over a decade. Your support will no doubt impact those in need

About the project

Funds from Priya’s Birthday will supporting the Graduating the Poor program.  This program will help women and men who live in absolute poverty in Northern Sri Lanka. It will address their immediate needs while also investing in their longer-term training, development and planning. It helps families secure the basic things like food and access to healthcare, but it also aims to build their financial resilience through savings. It also makes sure that these families are integrated in their community. At the moment, they are often very isolated, which just makes their situation even more dire.

With your help, families can find a better way to make a reliable income, therefore positively impacting current and future generations. We hope that you can support those who are less fortunate through this campaign.

How you will be updated

Please keep an eye out in your email (the one you used to make the donation) as you will receive a detailed update on how your funds we used in about three months. You will also receive a quick update the day after you make your donation.  If you don’t receive the emails please check your junk mail and put us on your safe list if you do find the email there.

Naaviyah’s First Birthday

Thank you to all our donors, we have met our fundraising goal.

Little Naaviyah is turning ONE! Naaviyah will have a small celebration with family, but she would also like to help make a positive impact on the lives of those in need. Naaviyah would like to support Palmera’s Graduating the Poor project. Any donation will help!

Sri Lanka’s north has a number of the country’s absolute poorest. They struggle to put food on the table, find work opportunities and access support services. They aren’t ready to be connected with the market; right now, they’re worried about sheer survival.

This particular project identifies the 100 of the poorest in the selected area and works with them over 2 years to graduate them out of absolute poverty. The project is designed to address their immediate needs while also investing in their longer-term training, development and planning. It helps families secure the basic things like food and access to healthcare, but it also aims to build their financial resilience through savings.

Naaviyah would like to thank you all from the bottom of her heart!

Race 2 Raise 2020

Thank you to all our donors, we have met our fundraising goal.

Eastern Empire’s ‘Eternal’

Thank you to all our donors, we have met our fundraising goal.

We are Eastern Empire, Sydney’s finest ensemble of South Asian artists. Since 2011, we have been sharing our inimitable interpretation of Indian music with the world.

VIDEO

Our latest show is a particularly special one: it is our tribute to Mani Ratnam, an Indian filmmaker who is an idol of Tamil and Hindu cinema. He is credited with revolutionising Tamil-language film, and has collaborated with some incredible composers, including Illaiyaraaja and AR Rahman.

We have been inspired by Mani Ratnam’s musical journey, and our shows explores the sound behind his films, from his early beginnings as a filmmaker to his more recent hits. We are so excited to be sharing this very personal show with you.

We’ve been a supporter of Palmera since its early days. Aside from being a good cause, it has always been important for us to find a way to give back. It’s the right thing to do, and we want to grow while we serve those in need.

That’s why we’re delighted to partner with Palmera for this show, and to be putting part of ticket sales towards improving the lives of women in Sri Lanka’s North. Specifically, we’ll be donating to Palmera’s Women’s Banking Network, which is designed to start and maintain a women’s banking network in Kanthansamy Nagar. In order to do this, the project needs to raise $41,913.

This works out a $279 per women; only $56 a year over the 5-year programme to work with women to better manage their livelihoods, build financial literacy and strengthen savings practices.

We’ll be playing at the Bryan Brown Theatre in Bankstown. We have two shows on Saturday 29 June: a matinee at 5.30pm and a finale at 8.30pm. More information and tickets are available via our event organiser, iBazaar.

We hope that you can join us to celebrate the work of Mani Ratnam, enjoy a night of music and support a great project.

Look forward to seeing you there,

Eastern Empire

Brown Boss Babes – Girls Night In

Thank you to all our donors, we have met our fundraising goal.

It’s time for our next BBB event!

An evening to dress up in your PJs, fill your bellies with comfort food and minds/hearts with just as much soul food   

Think girl chat. Hot cocoa. Plenty of D&M convos on empowerment, life, love, boys, girls and all things inbetween, while networking/connecting with your fellow fierce females.

As the event will be ticketed at a small fee (with all profits going towards Palmera). We have always admired Palmera’s work and wanted to support their new project Graduating The Poor. This project will aim to identify the 100 poorest families in the North and help them and their families and gives them the tools they need to move from struggle to sufficiency.

Show us your interest by RSVPing asap and purchasing tickets through our eventbrite page. This allows us to adequately accomodate food, space and activities for you all.

https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/brown-boss-babes-girls-night-in-tickets-64507189741

Please share with anyone and everyone you think will be interested in connecting with like-minded women, exchanging stories, exchanging life stories/experiences and having a great night in general!

Follow us over on instagram at @BrownBossBabesAU to find out more about us, daily inspiring posts, BTS content and news on our current and future events!

https://instagram.com/brownbossbabesau

Elijah’s 1st Birthday

Thank you to all our donors, we have met our fundraising goal.

On January 23rd 2017 Elijah came into our world. We thought that we would have a lot to teach him, but what we weren’t expecting was that he’d be teaching us so much more.

Elijah finds joy in the most obscure things: wiggling fingers, a spinning top, a scrunched nose. Through that we’ve learnt to appreciate the little things that make up our life, trying hard to be present to the wonder in everything around us.

He wakes up every morning flapping his hands excited about life. It’s our favourite part of the day as we contest for the opportunity to pick him up so we can experience that moment with him. Through that we’ve been reminded that life is a great adventure, every morning another exciting opportunity to discover what is in store for us.

Most importantly, Elijah’s wants are nothing more than the basics – food, a safe place to sleep and the love of those around him. In return he gives us and the world all his energy and enthusiasm. In this we’ve come to see that in life we should only take the little we need and give all we have.

And so we would thought what better way to celebrate his first birthday by doing just that. What he needs, he already has, so what he can give is everything else.

This year, we’ve decided to invest the money that we would have spent on his first birthday celebration into the Palmera’s Pass The Gift project.

This is an amazing project that builds sustainable rural agricultural businesses for women in Sri Lanka’s North while strengthening communities through a values-based approach.

Many of you, our family and closest friends, have asked about celebrating Elijah’s first birthday with him. We ask this year that you celebrate with him by giving to this cause because you’ve already given him what he needs this year – your love.

All our love

Nish and Abs

Xx

Handmade – London Launch

Thank you to all our donors, we have met our fundraising goal.

It’s the middle of Nov and we are just a week out from our London Handmade launch and we’re all a bit jittery and it’s not because winter is coming! Our small but effective team of volunteers has been working hard to get the word out about Handmade to our family, friends and colleagues. Will they come on the Handmade journey…? Will they connect with the strong women in the book..? And will they share it all with THEIR loved ones…? We hope so!

Handmade has a special place in my heart because I was lucky enough to be there when it all started back in Feb 2014. I still remember Abarna (Palmera’s Founder) sitting with me before my volunteer trip to Sri Lanka, describing her vision of sharing the stories of the war affected women in Sri Lanka through an everyday relatable medium like cooking. She didn’t know how it would look or how long it would take to bring this to fruition, but I could see her passion in wanting to share their stories with the world and I wanted to play my part whichever way I could.

My stay in Sri Lanka spanned two months and in that time I worked with Palmera’s partner to organise a number of interviews, document many recipes and even took a few photos along the way. Though I didn’t understand the local language, I was able to feel the hardship they had gone through, by the pain in their eyes. I learnt a lot about Sri Lanka and its people on that trip and will always be near & dear to me.

Fast forward 2.5 years, I had left Sydney and moved to London with my wife, when I got a call from Abarna saying that the book was ready for launch in London! I received an early copy of the book and couldn’t put it down! It was humbling to read the trials and tribulations of the war affected women as they struggled to feed their families. But it also left with a message of hope that there is a brighter future, one where they can once again celebrate their culture through food but also something as simple as making their children’s favourite meals on their birthday.

With all this in mind, our volunteers have spent countless hours organising the venue and catering, arranging speakers and of course spreading the word far and wide about the upcoming launch! The Handmade launch will be on Wed 25th Nov. It starts at 630pm at The Walrus & The Carpenter, 45 Monument Street, London EC3R 8BU. You will not only get to taste some of the dishes from Handmade but also get to hear the journey of the cookbook from a few of the interviewers and photographers who were on the ground, and the designers of the book who brought it to life! Hope to see you on the night!

Dine it Forward Campaign

Thank you to all our donors, we have met our fundraising goal.

We were so excited when we came up with the idea for Dine It Forward, we knew it was going to be a fun campaign to run as the majority of the team are foodies. We are looking forward to all the food ‘research’ we can do!

The way the campaign works is that we want people to host a meal for their friends and ask them to contribute an amount to Palmera for the meal. The name Dine it Forward came from the term Pay it Forward. It is all about doing something good to another when someone does something good for you. In this case, when you have hosted a friend or a family member, rather than them inviting you to do the same, they host someone else. Each time, as a thank you, money is raised for those who need it most.

One night after a big ‘research meal’ the team were brain storming how we could make it easier for people to host their own meals and we came up with the brilliant idea of a little ‘pack’ we could send them. The packs includes some recipe cards of Sri Lankan meals, spices they could use to cook the recipes and a CD they could show their guests on Palmera and where the money they donated would be going.

To kick off the campaign we are hosting three events ourselves for the general public. The three events will take place at City Hotel in Sydney where we will serve a full three course Sri Lankan meal. We will also have two chefs Paul Van Ryek and Manuja Fernano cater these meals and also speak to us about Sri Lankan food.

We had another brilliant idea to give all the guests who attend our events a pack to inspire them to host their own events. In these packs we also included some homemade Sri Lankans sweets. The packs where a great idea but we had plenty a late night putting them together and a few cooking fails trying to perfect the Sri Lankan sweets. All up we had to make more than 200 packs!! Not too sure if everyone in the team still thinks it’s a brilliant idea.

We thought it would also be fun to have some food inspired games on the night, so we organised a ‘guess the spice’ game where you guessed it, guests had to guess which ground spice was which.

We also asked the chefs to do some interactive lessons on how to make some simple entrees.

We are very excited to be launching this campaign, we have already sold out of tickets for all three of our launch events and hope that all our long nights organizing will pay off!