[email protected] is NOT junk mail. Please do not delete!

Imminently, Kelvin Rushworth (Public Relations Adviser, North East England) will be emailing u3a Chairs and Business Secretaries direct … using the email address: [email protected]. Watch out for the first communication!

Mo Brown and the u3a Northumbria Trustees have a wealth of really useful information to distribute to member u3as in the regular regional mailings. As the year progresses and lockdown eases, u3as will be wanting to retain existing and recruit new members. External publicity will become even more vitally important. Hence the separate ‘regional mailings’ about publicity.

Many people will have heard of (in , ) … it was conquered by Alexander the Great in 329 BCE, when it was known as Marakanda. The city was ruled by a succession of Iranian and Turkic rulers until it was conquered by the Mongols, under Genghis Khan, in 1220. Prospering from its location on the Silk Road between China and the Mediterranean Sea, at times, Samarkand was one of the largest cities of Central Asia. Today, Samarkand is the capital of Samarqand Region, as the city of is the ‘modern’ capital of Uzbekistan.

Registan – the heart of the ancient city of Marakanda

Kelvin Rushworth and his two sons decided to sponsor an Uzbek graduate (one of twelve children from an impoverished rural farming family in the Samarqand Region) to study for a Master’s degree in International Development at Northumbria University. Therefore, Kelvin has a number of family friends in Uzbekistan and visited the country twenty times between 2004 and 2012, often leading small groups of friends and friends-of-friends on 14-day tours of the country (including Samarkand and Tashkent, as well as the UNESCO-preserved ancient cities of Bukhara and Khiva).