Philippines Typhoon Fundraising and a wander in the Dockyard.

Well hasn’t it been a busy week this week!

Last Friday night a fundraiser was held at the Trough, raising money for the Philippines Typhoon Appeal. On Saturday there was a cake sale, with donation buckets at the West Store and JACS café sold cupcakes of which the profits also went to the appeal.

On Monday we held a Pay to Play Day here at Falklands Radio, taking requests and pledges throughout the day. I myself paid to have five songs played…and yes of course there was a Buddy Holly song in my choices…

 

My song choices....

The FIC Insurance Department went to work in fancy dress and made sweet treats for everybody that turned up and donated money. The Community School took this one step further by holding a ‘Give us a P please’ themed day. Onesies were classed as pyjamas and they seemed to be the favoured outfit to fund raise in. The tuck shop sold food with a ‘P’ theme, pizza, pasta, pies, etc. They also held a teacher vs. student PE session.

 

Students are interviewed by FITV, crowd around the tuckshop,
and hang around waiting for the bell to ring.

The Falkland Islands Government donated £5,000 to the appeal and as of Thursday lunchtime a massive total of £14,654.07 has been raised. This is a very impressive amount of money from a community of this size. So much so that when we tweeted the amount, the UK’s Ambassador to the United Nations congratulated the efforts of Falkland Islanders. That’s right, Mark Lyall Grant replied to our tweet. He offered his congratulations, noting that the figure was 18% of what the Chinese Government had originally offered.

 

Some events so far...

More fundraising is happening tonight at Bittersweet, where five young musicians are holding a live music night. No doubt it will be good event.

Also happening over the last seven days was the now annual Craft Fayre, held at the FIDF Hall, the first Public Meeting of the new Legislative Assembly and a public meeting to discuss the ongoing Port Project.

Today I took another look around the location of the new Museum and National Trust. When the building works are complete the Museum will be moving from Britannica House down to the Dockyard, next to Gilbert House, behind the Penguin News building. I had previously went along to an open day and managed to wangle myself a solo tour of the old buildings and new, and was told all about what the future holds for this project. It sounds like an exciting project. We’ll be broadcasting that information soon.

 

Left - inside the Central Store at present
Centre - The Central Store
Right - Reflection of Dockyard in Central Store window

A (slightly distorted) view of the Dockyard

The old sheds opposite the Central Store

All of that was all going on, along with our usual workload of finding news, writing news…the news will be up soon too…

We also had a good number of interviewees come into the studio this week, including a number of the MLAs to talk about their portfolios, Neil Judd, the new Senior Agricultural Advisor for the Department of Agriculture, and finally, Steve Massam who has been commissioned to produce the memorial bust of Baroness Thatcher that will go on display in Stanley.

So like I said, a busy week here at FIRS HQ.

~Sam~