About Gujarati Cultural Association of Arizona

KNOW OUR STORY

Gujarati Cultural Association (GCA) of Arizona was established to maintain, enhance, and promote our Gujarati Cultural Heritage to our Valley of the Sun that is continually growing.  Currently there are more than 1000+ Gujarati families in Arizona whom GCA aims to serve. GCA encourages our Gujarati community to support all the events and would also like to appeal to everyone who is not current GCA member to do so in earnest. A handful Gujarati pioneers and community leaders congregated in 1979 to celebrate a first organized Navartri Utsav. This event resulted in formation of Gujarati Cultural Association of Arizona in 1981. 

Constitution was written primarily to help Gujarati immigrants to maintain and promote Gujarati culture and brotherhood among Gujarati families in this new environment.

In early 1980’s Navratri celebration was primarily at elementary school with garba sung by local communities and dandiya raas were primarily played with the tune from pre recorded audio cassette. Picnic was organized by making phone calls to individual members. As the community grew, thus the new era began for GCA. 

Today we celebrate our festivals in grand style. We bring groups from India for Navratri and Shardh Purnima. The Picnis which was organized by making phone calls to individual members and meeting in a small park, is now done on a much larger scale with sports and other activities including, Cricket, Volleyball and basketball. Singing and Housy (BINGO) are enjoyed as well. We celebrate other festivals like Uttryan (kite flying) and Holi with other sister organizations.

We also bringing dramas to our communities on annual basis. GCA has also distributed a detailed phone book that many hold as an essential household commodity. The GCA Diwali dinner, is a fun celebration as well, inviting bollywood style artists from all over the country, and India for entertainment.

Join GCA and be part of something great. Looking back, the spirit and enthusiasm from the past presidents, their spouses, and many member-at-large , have grown our association to a very active, responsive, and successful cultural organization

 

Gujarati Cultural Association of Arizona

Mission

Mission of GCA is multifaceted, at one end of the spectrum it continues to host religious events such as Navratri, Sharad Purnima and Diwali and at the other end of the spectrum it is striving to host more events for entertainment value such as picnic, drama, concert and sports tournaments.  The underlying objective is to utilize the above mentioned mission to perpetuate rich Gujarati culture and assimilate fraternity among community members in our growing Phoenix metropolis.