TŶ HAFAN FUNDRAISER CONCERT
Rachel Meredith is the wife of Risca Male Choir chorister Ian Meredith (First Tenor) and a tireless worker for all kinds of local charities stemming from her work as a Community Champion at Morrison’s store in Rogerstone.
On October 14 Rachel produced the most amazing concert which took place at the magnificent building of Moriah Baptist Church, Risca. She has kindly written a review of the event, and we’re thrilled that it will now be published on our website.
TŶ HAFAN FUNDRAISER CONCERT
MORIAH BAPTIST CHURCH, RISCA
FRIDAY 14 OCTOBER 2022
Hi! I am the Community champion for the Morrison’s Store in Rogerstone. Our job role is to work with, support and help our local community, whether it is schools, local clubs, community groups, food banks or charities - everyone comes under our banner within our local community!
Our Morrisons Partnership Charity is called Together For Short Lives, under its umbrella, comes lots of Children’s Hospices around the UK. With that comes all the South Wales and West Wales Morrison’s stores supporting our only children hospice in Wales which is Tŷ Hafan!
So I came up with this wonderful idea, back in the summer whilst I was sat up in the front row of Moriah Church on the balcony supporting not only my husband, who is in Risca Male Choir, but our Risca Branch of the Royal British Legion who had arranged the Memorial concert for the Falklands conflict. And as I sat there, listening and looking I thought - ‘I could do this’! What about a concert for our great community to come together again after the last two years or so, whilst also raising awareness and much needed funds for our only children’s hospice in South Wales! Tŷ Hafan!
So before all the schools finished for the summer holidays, I emailed four of the schools within the closest proximity to our area and asked if they would like to take part! I emailed Risca Male Choir, liaised with Martin Hodson (MD Emeritus of RMC), spoke to Adrian at the Salvation Army and then telephoned wizard pianist, Dan Thomas!
I would like to say a massive thank you to you all for saying yes almost immediately without question and trusting me to bring this together, with help from a few special people!
The evening went spectacularly well, with all schools performing brilliantly, the choirs sounding phenomenal and the band playing some great pieces for us all! The icing on the cake was the final community song accompanied by Dan Thomas, with all the congregation also taking part in Love Shine a Light. The church lights were turned off to enable all to show their torches and the children could light small battery operated little tea lights.
For me, after months of preparation, this was exactly how I had envisaged the whole concert coming together! Big thanks go to Ursula Withers of “Life’s A Party Occasion Balloons” who donated the balloons to decorate the Church. A big, big thank you to Emily Clewer who listened to what I wanted to achieve, and she created our wonderful programmes, tickets and posters for this event - they are something special. Thank you so much to my amazing friend Steve Veysey (Royal British Legion), who has helped, guided and supported me massively with the arrangements for this to fall into place that evening. Also to the Risca Branch of the RBL who kindly paid for the printing at K&R print in Cwmcarn.
Finally, a huge thank you to Marc & Tim (Rev Marc Owen, minister of Moriah Church, and Tim Moody, assistant pastor of Moriah) for hosting the event and for making us feel so welcome. Also to my amazing fellow Champions who have listened to me talk about this event for the last few months who came to support the evening by greeting people and selling programmes and taking donations. And to you, all of you who took the time out of your Friday evening to support us, whether it’s a family member or the charity itself, I really appreciated you coming to the event. So far, the monies that have come in have now given us a total of: £1,687! (as of October 20th)
