Classical Music Concert, raffles and craft stall raise £700 for Winter Night Shelter MK
One of the five local charities we support is the Winter Night Shelter MK. Covid has had a significant impact on their services, with them now becoming a year round charity helping many different people at their point of crisis. But the winter months are coming up, which they anticipate as being even busier than ever with the increase of homelessness seen here and nationally. The Winter Night Shelter supports:
- rough sleepers;
- sofa surfers;
- people in emergency accommodation or temporary housing;
- those who need support with their tenancies;
- anyone at risk of homelessness; and
- others who are vulnerable.
It’s been a tough couple of years for us in terms of fundraising for our linked charities but at last lockdown was lifted, and just in time, as we had been planning our first ever live classical concert fundraising event to support the work of the Winter Night Shelter MK.
One of our newest members, Karen Mason is an Oboe player and is part of a Quintet. She and her friends agreed to join her in a night of music which we held on Friday 1st October at The Servant King Church at Furzton. The evening started at 7pm with a chance to get raffle tickets and browse the craft stall before taking a seat at 7.30pm to listen to a varied programme of classical music and dance/TV/Film music. We had an interval for people to enjoy tea, coffee and cake and to buy more raffle tickets and items from our craft stall made by our members and friends.
The evening was a great success. A big thanks to Karen Mason and her Quintet, called Melomane, which means music lover. The musicians were Karen Mason on Oboe, Caroline Cartwright on Bassoon, Kate Knight on French Horn, Clair Vogeli on Clarinet and Bridget Wilson on Flute.
At our October meeting we invited Kathy Howard, Welfare Team from Winter Night Shelter MK to our meeting and were very privileged to hand over a cheque for £700 raised from the Music event and previous raffle ticket collections. Kathy updated us on the continuing increase of homeless people in MK and the kinds of help they are having to give their clients and how this money would be spent. She also shared information about the forthcoming Emergency Winter Night Shelters which would be setting up around Milton Keynes from 22 November and their need for volunteers to help staff these emergency centres. To find out more