IWG Tunis Update (2014JUNE18)

IWG Tunis Update

Dear Ladies,

On the 12th, more than 30 ladies came to our IWG Closing-lunch Gathering. We shared our wonderful time together particularly with those ladies who are leaving Tunis for other destinations soon. I would like to take this opportunity to thank warmly those IWG ladies who are leaving for your great contribution and participation at IWG's events and activities. We will remember you and remember the good times we spent together at this beautiful hosting country. We will miss you! Wish you all good luck and settle well at your new home place!

Time is passing by very quickly. We are now approaching end of the year in the region. Schools are off for summer vocation. Hot summer is about to start. Same as previous years, IWG Tunis is also going to close down for its summer time. We will restart our gatherings, events and activities in September. Kindly note during our summer break, your email won't be answered. Thank you for your understanding and attention. 

From entire IWG Management Team, Angela, Fiona, Anne, Nicole, Zhanar and myself, we thank you sincerely for your contribution, support and participation to the IWG for the past year! We are looking forward to welcoming everyone back in September. 

Wishing everybody a peaceful, relaxing and enjoyable summer holiday! 

Thanks and see you soon,

Meng

Meng ZHANG

President, IWG Tunis

IWG Tunis Update (2014JUNE9)

IWG Tunis Update

Dear Ladies,

On May 31, IWG Tunis held its first Art Fair at the Elyssa Club in Sidi Bou Said. We had really high quality of fine art works participated on the Fair, even though it was a small fair in terms of vendors. The highlight and the focus of our Art Fair was the beautiful oil paintings presented by ladies from the IWG Oil Painting Group. For most of ladies in the Painting Group (including myself), it was first time to share our studies and works with the public during our past 1 or 2 years oil painting study with our Instructor, Sandhya Sharma. Sandhya's unique teaching technique enables and encourages these ladies to explore and grasp the hard core of oil painting world within amazing short period of time. From everyone at the Oil Painting Group, we want to say: "Thank you so much, Sandhya!" Of course, behind the achievement of these beautiful oil paintings is immense effort and hardworking from everyone at the Oil Painting Group. This is fully confirmed by professional artists who visited the Art Fair and left their impression about our work at the visitors' book. Due to limited space, I am sharing with you only 2 notes here. 

"I am so impressed by your works, ladies! I can say, Sandhya is a good teacher (too bad she is leaving). I wish you all a bright future in the art world. Either as professional or hobby activity, the most important is to enjoy it and be open to the world around us. Good luck to you all and we will be looking forward to you next show."   Faika 

"Wonderful work. You are a very talented group of ladies!"   Nicole

Thanks so much to Faika and Nicole!  Your kind comments as professional artists are worth a lot to each one of us at the Oil Painting Group. We know, we are on the right track to approach the fine art world. Our art journey has just started! I am also happy to share a couple of photos with you and particularly for those who missed our Art Fair. 

In June, IWG will hold two events before it is closed for the summer time. 

The schedule is as follows.

June 12, Thursday

IWG Closing-lunch Gathering (A Farewell Gathering for Ladies who are leaving Tunis Soon)

at La Galette in La Marsa (60M away from the train station) 

25 dinars per person for a full menu 

June 21, Saturday

IWG Bazaar 

for supporting a project at the Ennejma Ezzahra Palace in Sidi BouSaid

at the Saf Saf Cafe in La Marsa organised by Angela

Free entrance for visitors 

Please check the emails which I sent before for signing up the Lunch Gathering. I will forward you some details about the IWG Bazaar once Angela has further info. 

At the end of this edition newsletter, I wish to address the issue of how to deal with other member's private info. It has brought to my attention for an incident which happened in one of our IWG's activity groups recently. At this Group, every group member's email address is open on the mailing list. Instead of respecting other member's privacy, certain member(s) misused the group open mailing list circulated unwished info to everyone on the list. 

I would like to specify firmly that every member's name, email address, mobile number and residential area and so on belong to each individual privacy. It is strictly forbidden to distribute, publish or share any of these private info with others inside or outside the IWG group (unless you have met agreement with each other personally). Going forward, the mailing list of each IWG's activity group will be chosen only "Bcc" by the Group Head to send out messages. If you wish to share certain info with other group members or entire IWG, please send it either to your Group Head or to "iwgtunis@hotmail.co.uk". Thank you for your attention and understanding.

Best regards,

Meng

Meng ZHANG

President, IWG Tunis

IWG Tunis Update (2014MAY26)

IWG Tunis Update

Dear Ladies, 

May is a meaningful month at IWG Tunis's charity history. In this month, we have identified and donated (or being donated) our charity fund to two very good charity projects.   

One project is to build a play ground for the students at the Association Ferme Therapeutique pour Handicapés in Sidi Thabet. Samia Ben Ammer kindly organised a visit for us to meet the President, Madam Gasmi and identified the project. On May 7th, we donated our IWG fund to support the project at our second visit to the Association. 

Another project is to install a gas pipeline for the Association Nationale du Soutien des Déficients Auditifs (ASDA) in Borj Cedria. Many ladies are familiar with ASDA as Samia organised a couple of times visits to the Association. During those visits which happened in winter, we noticed, all ASDA's students suffered coldness in their classrooms and same as teachers in their offices. Now the ASDA decides to raise fund to install a gas pipeline to resolve the problem completely. Samia kindly brought the project details which made our decision of IWG's participation very quickly. Tomorrow, IWG's charity fund will be donated to the ASDA project. Here, I would like to thank Samia specially for her great contribution in finding these two charity projects. 

When we talk about IWG Charity, I must mention Marianne Rauhe. Marianne joined IWG Tunis 2.5 years ago. Since she joined us, she has been always participating IWG's charity activities. She also volunteered to serve at different charity associations in Tunis. Marianne is leaving Tunis soon for a new destination, I want to thank her warmly for her participation and contribution to the IWG Charity. Let us wishing her all the best at her new place!  

Here, I would also like to thank particularly those kind ladies who donated different items to the local charities. Your generosity is highly appreciated. And your kind action will be always remembered. 

May is also a beautiful month for many cultural events. 

On May 22, I and many IWG ladies had great honour and pleasure listened Sandhya's presentation "An Artist and Her Universe" at IWG's May Coffee Gathering. I am a student at Sandhya's IWG Oil Painting Group. Same as my friends in the Group, during our nearly 2-year-study period, we are approached often by many people who are interested or curious about our progress. I am very happy to announce, some of our oil painting studies will be presented at the 2014 IWG Art Fair at the Elyssa Club in Sidi Bou Said on Saturday, May 31. The entrance is for free. You are most welcome to visit us! For detailed info, please see attached PDF flyer. 

Since this Saturday, next to Elyssa Club in Sidi Bou Said, there are another two events - "Sebil Kermesse" and "Vide - Grenier" (Details info attached) are also taking place, I highly recommend everybody to reserve some time and visit these 3 events together, spend a relaxing and pleasant Saturday. Hope to see you there!

Thanks for your support!

Meng

Meng ZHANG

President, IWG Tunis

IWG Tunis Update (2014MAY05)

IWG Tunis Update

Dear Ladies,

It is thrilled to see so many responses to the IWG Membership Survey. Thank you so much to those who have submitted completed survey! Also, many thanks to those ladies who asked questions. Please forgive me for not responding each individual survey personally. As there are so many emails with different questions, I have to answer them publicly so that all members who have or might have the same questions could profit with the answers. 

At moment, Nicole is working hard to go through each survey to install your photo and name on an excel spreadsheet. After this step is completed, Angela will process next step with a print house. You will receive an email from IWG to tell you when and where to pick up your card and pay once your card is ready. Since IWG Tunis will have a summer break after June 25. To those ladies who plan to travel during summer time, you will receive your card after your return to Tunis. Please notify IWG on "iwgtunis@hotmail.co.uk" once you are back to arrange time for picking up. IWG membership card will be officially used for IWG's events as of September 2014. To those ladies who have not completed your survey, it is still not too late to take actions now. Thank you for your understanding and support!

In May, there are many exciting IWG events awaiting us to explore. I am sharing with everybody our IWG May Event Schedule here. 

May 7, Wednesday 

Second visit to the "Ferme Therapeutique pour Handicapés" 

organised by Samia. IWG's charity fund for participation of a selected project will be handed to the Association. 

IWG May International Cuisine

organised by Malek. 

(Date, venue and details to be announced soon)

May 22, Thursday

IWG May Coffee Gathering

Topic: An Artist and Her Universe 

Speaker: Sandhya Sharma 

at Zmorda in La Soukra

(A separate email for signing-up will be followed shortly.)

May 31, Saturday

IWG Tunis Art Fair 2014

at Elyssa Club in Sidi Bou Said 

(A separate email with details will be followed shortly.) 

At the end of this edition newsletter, I would like to repeat the same announcement for Marianne who volunteered to collect IWG donation for the charity association ASDA. If you wish to donate clothes, old towel and left-over make-ups to ASDA, please contact Marianne directly via either email on lkarlsen@gmail.com or tel. at 55086350. In mid May, Samia and Marianne plan to deliver our IWG donations to the ASDA.

Thank you and best regards,

Meng

Meng ZHANG

President, IWG Tunis

IWG Tunis Update (2014APR21)

IWG Tunis Update

Dear Ladies,

"Now, Mambo! 1, 2, 3, 4, ......." the Salsa Dancing Instructor, Yuri reminding everyone's steps together with the hot Salsa music. Everybody was on the dancing floor to follow him. This was how we started our April Coffee Gathering last Thursday at Zmorda. "It was a real fun!" - this was the common feeling from all ladies who participated. We also learnt from Yuri, Salsa was actually born in the mid-70s in New York with strong influences from Latin American dances. After all of us had a great fun of learning hot Salsa and Kizomba dances with Yuri, we entered second part of our gathering - Ikebana presentation. The atmosphere was changed from hot and active to clam and classical. Everybody watched carefully how Chiraz managed to turn single flower pieces into unique Japanese flower arrangement - Ikebana. Chiraz kindly demonstrated us 3 different Ikebana arrangements. All of them are so beautiful! I made some photos for our last gathering to share with all of you and particularly with those who missed it. 

As we pre-announced in our previous gatherings about establishing IWG Membership Card for all members. Angela and I decided to take steps further to start with the entire process. I will send a survey to all current IWG members in a separate email. Please read through the survey carefully and take necessary actions. We plan to finish the entire process by end of June before IWG closing down for the summer vocation.

Last Wednesday, Samia organised a tour to the Ferme Therapeutique Pour Handicapes (FTH). Marianne and I joined her. Mme Gasmi, the President of the FTH received us warmly and showed us around. This is a very well organised association. Perhaps is the best in Tunisia at moment. Mme Gasmi told us, the FTH was established in 2009. Till now, they have 90 students from age between 7 to 35. These handicapped students learn garden and agricultural skills at the FTH everyday. The students were very friendly and polite to us. From their smiling face, we could tell they are very happy at FTH. Mme Gasmi also presented an interesting small project which IWG could participate and support with our charity fund. We might organise a weekend outing to the farm depending on the interest from members. 

Marianne and Samia also asked me to make announcement for her to those ladies who wish to donate clothes, old towel and left-over make-ups to the charity association ASDA. Please contact Marianne directly via email lkarlsen@gmail.com or tel. 55086350. Samia and Marianne plan to deliver donations from IWG ladies to the ASDA in mid May.

At the end of this edition newsletter, I'd like to announce that Françoise Masson is our new Head of the Group "on parle français". The Group is scheduled to meet every Wednesday from 10.15 to 11.30  at a group member's place. If someone is interested in joining the group, please contact Françoise on email address: massonaf@orange.fr or at phone 53336464. Except running this French conversation group, Françoise is also available to offer private French lessons to your request. Thanks very much, Françoise!

Best regards,

Meng

Meng ZHANG

President, IWG Tunis 

IWG Tunis Spring Bazaar Update

Dear Ladies,

On April 12, IWG Tunis held 2014 Spring Bazaar at lovely Saf Saf Cafe in La Marsa. 

The weather was beautiful. A lot of people came to the Bazaar. It was another successful IWG Bazaar!

Thanks so much to Angela who applied her previous Bazaar organising experience on the Bazaar! This time, in addition to our usual vendors, there were a couple of tables rented by different embassies. It enhanced our Bazaar atmosphere greatly. 

The highlight on IWG side goes to Barbara and Millie who were in charge of the IWG Book Table at the Bazaar. This was the only table from IWG participated the Spring Bazaar this time. Millie and Barbara deserves our great respect for their time and efforts. Well done, ladies and thanks very much! 

My special thank goes to everyone who was spreading the IWG Bazaar news and also to everybody who came to visit the Bazaar. You are our great supporters. Your action is a very import element to make this successful IWG event. Thank you all!

I made a couple of photos at the Bazaar to share with everyone here. Angela forwarded an interview video also to share with you all. It is an interview (in French) to Angela talking about IWG and the Bazaar. Please click below link to view the article and the interview video.

http://www.tunisie.co/index.php/article/3180/decouverte/actus/bazar-211723

Since IWG's Bazaar is always very well received by people from all communities in Tunis. We plan to organize more similar events in future to support IWG's charity projects.

Best regards,

Meng

Meng ZHANG

President, IWG Tunis

IWG Tunis Update (2014APR7)

IWG Tunis Update

Dear Ladies,

Tracy's fund raising concert for the charity project sponsored by the ACT has finished successfully. I would like to thank specially to Angela, Judyth and Janet who organized, promoted and participated the event. Many thanks also to everybody who came to the concert, you supported the charity project with your action. 

I mentioned in the last newsletter about IWG March Int'l Cuisine which was very well received by all participants. Zhanar who was at the cuisine session las time made some lovely photos to share with everybody. I have published some photos on the IWG Blog and attached some for all of you too. Thanks very much, Zhanar! 

In April, we will have following events in the schedule.

April 12, Saturday

IWG 2014 Spring Bazaar 

organized by Angela 

10am to 4pm at the Saf Saf Cafe in La Marsa 

April 17, Thursday

IWG April Coffee Gathering

10am to noon

(Venue and details to be followed soon.)

IWG April Int'l Cuisine

organized by Malek

(Date, venue and details to be followed soon.)

Please reserve some of your Saturday time to visit our spring bazaar at Saf Saf Cafe in La Marsa. This time, it is a free entrance for everybody. 

Here are some announcements from IWG members.

Samia and Marianne are planning a charity visit to the "Therapeutic Farm" in Sidi Thabet on Friday , April 11th. Samia still has 2 seats available in her car. In case of more people wish to join the visit, car pool is mostly needed. We will leave at about 9am from La Marsa. Please notify Samia at 20327669 if you wish to join. Thanks so much for organizing the visit, Samia!

Marianne is collecting clothes and leftover make-ups for the charity association ASDA. Two years ago, IWG organized twice visits to the Association. After the visits, IWG also donated fund for the renewal of their teaching equipments. During our visits, we realized that the leftover make-ups are most needed for their teaching purpose. If anybody wishes to donate your leftover make-ups, please bring them along with you to the next coffee gathering on April 17th. Samia will collect them for you. Many thanks for Marianne's initiative and action!

A private announcement from Lauren who wishes to rent a furnished apartment/house in La Marsa area in summer. For details, please see her advertisement published at the "Member's Advertisement" on the IWG Blog.

Thanks and best regards,

Meng

Meng ZHANG

President, IWG Tunis