South Asian Heritage Month (SAHM) started in 2020 and runs every year from 18th July – 17th of August. SAHM is an opportunity to celebrate South Asian history, culture, and communities. The term ‘South Asian’ was introduced in the ’80s to encompass people with roots in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and the Maldives.
Understanding culture through the power of story-telling allows a chance to explore the South Asian community and identity in the 21st century whilst reflecting back on historical movements that shape South Asian Heritage.
Celebrations at Transreport
This month at Transreport, to celebrate South Asian Heritage Month, we dedicated our Diversity and Inclusion Forum which takes place with all colleagues on the last Friday of every month.
Our Diversity and Inclusion Forum launched last month in July where we covered Pride and looked at LGBTQ+ rights across the globe followed by some discussions about how we can support colleagues and be an ally within the workplace. At Transreport, 25% of our colleagues have shared that they are South Asian so we always knew that this would be an exciting time for internal celebrations and we wanted to join in with the 2023 theme of ‘Stories to Tell’.
‘Stories to Tell’
On Friday 28th July we had the privilege of hearing from one of our QA Engineers Shilpa Awasthi who shared her story for the 2023 theme ‘Stories to Tell’.
Shilpa shared with us photographs and stories of finding a community of like-minded people when moving to the UK and discussed how she celebrates a range of festivals with friends. A popular point of discussion was around South Asian food and culinary influences! When asked why she thought it was important to celebrate South Asian Heritage Month Shilpa said:
‘to better understand one another, I thought South Asian Heritage Month was very important, considering I am South Asian myself. Having this opportunity to get to know each other better made me happy to be involved.’
A huge thank you to Shilpa for sharing her story with us.
If you have any stories that you’d like to share with us then please do get in touch with us through our social channels, we’d love to hear from you!