Light bulb moment: fundraising target is reached early
RE: ARCADE Christmas lights. Since taking over the charity now that it has come away from the constables and douzaine and running it since 1 March this year, our first priority was to ensure we had enough operational funding in place in time to contract the testing, minor repairs, erecting and then taking down again of the lights. As the lights need to begin being erected in October (over a six-week programme) we decided that the £35,000 needed for this work needed to be in place by 1 September. Thanks to the generosity of you, the community of Guernsey and Guernsey Post with the envelope drop, we reached this total at the start of June.
A few years ago some multi-coloured festoon lighting was purchased for the Commercial Arcade (before my time), I understand that this lighting was unfortunately not as good a quality as some of the other lighting used around our town and has proved troublesome from the outset. Time and money was spent on trying to waterproof these lights to no avail. Arcade businesses have understandably been disappointed and disgruntled when last year this lighting gave up the ghost completely within a few days of the Santa switch-on. We were all lucky, that Event Services kindly loaned us some icicle lights, which although did not fit the whole Arcade, allowed this area of town not to be totally in the dark all December.
I am pleased to say, the first area of lights to be replaced will be the Commercial Arcade. The budget for this is £7,000 of which £3,000 comes from the remainder of last year's M&S (Guernsey) Plastic Bag Fund and £1,000 from the Saffery Rotary Walk pledge, which the St Peter Port Christmas Lights relay team completed last weekend.
I circulated a letter to all Arcade businesses explaining that we had £4,000 towards their lights and requested their collective support and am awaiting their responses. At this time our second priority is to raise this £3,000 as soon as possible, so that we can order the new lighting in time for this year's display.
Envelopes are still coming in as well as donations through PayPal and now The Channel Islands Co-Operative has joined in with the fundraising and has launched the Buy a Bulb Campaign in all their stores. You can pop your £1 (or more please) in the box and take a badge (if you would like one, while stocks last). The next £3,000 raised will go to the Arcade lights replacement fund.
For information, our third priority is to find 'cheap' storage of around 80 square metres for the lights from January 2018 as we need to move out of our current store this October when the lights go up.
If anyone can help with storage, please get in contact.
JAX ROBIN,
Chair and trustee,
St Peter Port Christmas Lights Charity (AGC 395).
jaxr@cwgsy.net
