Celebrate Tanguero Pope Francis’ birthday and provide shelter to the homeless.

TICKETS

http://buytickets.at/tangoshelter/122544

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Date: Saturday 9 Dec 2017
Time: 18:00 > 22:00 (4 hours)
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Entry Price: £12 (in advance online) ; £15 on the door (if available)

Lottery Tickets: £1 / Buy 5 get 1 free so £5 for 6 tickets

Prizes will be drawn before the milonga by random number generator. Top prize declared on the night after the performance. [Prizes are listed at the foot of this note]

£10 minimum value of prisez

Prize delivery in London. Lottery tickets available to those attending Tango Shelter 2017 or not.

Music: 100% Argentine Traditional tangos in Tandas with Cortinas 4T c 4T c 3V c 4T c 4T c 3M c

Address:
Mount Street Jesuit Centre
Farm Street Church Hall,
114 Mount St,
Mayfair,
London W1K 3AH

[Opposite Connaught Hotel so entrance via Mount Street and NOT Farm Street]

Tango Shelter 2017

It is getting cold. But no problem for us as Tangueros and Tangueras have warm embraces. So let’s help The Westminster Night Shelter Project though Tango Shelter as well as celebrate Tanguero Pope Francis’ Birthday.

Pope Francis, an Argentinian Jesuit priest, is a lover of Tango. He declared that his favourite orquesta is D’Arienzo.

Every year there is an open air Tango celebrated in St Peter’s Square in Rome. That would be uncomfortable in a London mid-December. The Tango embraces would have to be very warm indeed for that.

So on Saturday 9th December 2017 a few days before Pope Francis’ birthday on 17th December let’s celebrate a charity milonga in Mayfair at the elegant Farm Street Church Hall across the road from The Connaught Hotel in aid of the Westminster Night Shelter Project.

13 churches and a synagogue partnering together provide accomodation for rough sleepers for 8 months of the year – from October to May.

The hall where the Milonga will be held is transformed into a Monday Night dining room and then a dormitory for the homeless as part of the Westminster Night Shelter Project for people who would otherwise have spent the night on the streets of London.

Meals are supplied by local hotels and restaurants including Claridge’s.

http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/news/2016/10/21/jesuits-team-up-with-londons-poshest-hotel-to-feed-the-homeless/

The parish buys inflatable beds, sleeping bags and pillows. These are allocated to each guest and stored in the church hall after the dormitory is dismantled. Breakfast is supplied in the morning.

The guests are referred by the West London Day Centre, Marble Arch which provides a place for homeless people to drop-in for breakfast, and case workers to offer advice on matters such as housing, skills development and educational opportunities.

More info on the West London Day Centre and the Westminster Night Shelter Project:

http://www.wlm.org.uk/what-we-do/westminster-night-shelter

When they arrive at the church hall in Mount Street they are welcomed with tea and soup.

Farm Street Church’s Coordinator Scott McCombe said:

“While the Day Centre offers a very practical service, people who go there are inevitably called ‘clients’ as staff offer them support and advice.

To us they were ‘guests’, individuals that we welcomed into our home and who were entitled to respect as human beings. On each occasion, there was a social feeling to the evening and both guests and volunteers found the experience very rewarding.”

“We were never short of people offering to volunteer,” explains Scott, “They spent time chatting socially to the 15 guests before serving a main course and a pudding prepared by local kitchens.

Four volunteers then spent the night in the Mount Street premises in case there were any problems – but there never were.”

“Guests came from a broad range of backgrounds and nationalities,” according to Scott. “They included people of all ages – some professionals who had fallen on hard times, others who were sofa-surfers who had been relying on friends for a night’s sleep. There was no ‘typical’ rough sleeper among our guests; but all of them were treated with respect and were given a warm welcome.”

After a light breakfast, the guests dispersed to the Westminster Day Centre where they had the opportunity to enjoy a shower and a more substantial meal.

“To have been able to have supplied these amenities for these guests over the seven weeks was a real blessing,” Scott McCombe says. “Many of them had arrived feeling nervous and introverted, but their experience of community and welcome had a very positive effect upon all of them. But the volunteers got almost as much out of the experience. Some of them expected it to be quite traumatic – full of doom and gloom; so they were pleasantly surprised to discover it was a really wonderful, joyful atmosphere at Farm Street as they interacted with their guests.”

So let us Tangueros turn our warm embraces into a warm place to stay for London’s cold and shivering homeless.
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Refreshments: Sparkling and Still water supplied. [Warren Edwardes]

Nibbles: PLEASE BRING TO SHARE sweet and savoury nibbles

Organiser and Tango DJ(free): Warren Edwardes
http://tango.edwardes.org/

Performance (free): Kim Benitez and David Benitez
http://www.tangomovement.com/video-gallery

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