On Saturday 4^th April 2009, between 7pm and 11pm, the United Kingdom Tamil Student’s Union (UKTSU) hosted a dinner gathering where core committee members from the Tamil Societies of up to 24 universities across the UK were united. Attendees included Brunel, Cambridge, City of London College, East London, Greenwich, Imperial, King’s, Kingston, London Metropolitan, Middlesex, Nottingham, Oxford, Queen Mary, Roehampton, SOAS, South Bank, St. George ’s, Surrey, Westminster and a sixth form college, St. Dominic’s.

The evening was commenced with a brief introduction on UKTSU and the Public Relations team within the organisation. The idea of UKTSoc and the ways in which the societies can work together were established. This was then followed by the introduction of all the guests through a game of wacky questions where the guests gave some very amusing answers and thus got to know each other all too well! The Cause team of UKTSU then gave their presentation on the current proposal: the Mannar Project. This outlined the current cause UKTSU is involved with, and many of the guests were impressed that such work was being carried out and showed their interest in contributing towards it through their respective Tamil Societies. A question and answer session was carried out to ensure understanding of the purpose of the evening and the cause UKTSU stands for.

The latter part of the evening consisted of a delicious dinner and dessert. The guests got an opportunity to mingle with each other. Then was the game of charades where tables competed against each other (including a UKTSU table!) and the winning table, which had members from St.George’s, Nottingham and City of London College, was awarded with a scrumptious box of chocolates, which they kindly shared with the rest of the tables… it was indeed a gathering of warm-hearted young people with great spirits and ideas.

The evening was concluded with a feedback session from each of the tables and thoughts of our people back home. As a result of the evening, UKTSU moved forward by drawing together the interested societies to work together towards a common cause, a student cause that will benefit the underprivileged children in our homeland!