Barcelona La Mercè Festival -- here we come!

For the second consecutive year, Mumbai Smiles will be present at the famous Barcelona La Mercè Festival in Spain. This festival is usually five days long and is held in the end of September in honour of Mare de Deu de la Merce, the Patron Saint of Barcelona. Bidding goodbye to the summer in Spain, it is a hugely popular street carnival with hundreds of activities planned all over the city. Getting to participate in the festival is a big boost for our organisation as it will give us visibility and help us connect with thousands and thousands of people.

This year in addition to having an information stand to disseminate our work and projects, we will also conduct fun-raising activities aimed at the youngest people: children's play on the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The purpose of this game is to promote the MDGs and to mobilise people against poverty.

Setting the Millennium Development Goals is a global movement against poverty. At the Millennium Summit held in 2000, all member states of the United Nations adopted the Millennium Declaration which reaffirmed the universality and timelessness of the purposes and principles of the United Nations. The Declaration established eight goals, listed in the graphic below:

2015 is the deadline set for achieving these eight objectives to which all countries have committed themselves. There has been a great deal of progress but there is still much to be done. And the carnival is one platform for that.