Community

The Soulstice spirit raises £35K for Cherry Lodge!

We had joy, we had unexpected pain… Then came an amazing outpouring of love, support & total community spirit from near & far!

That pretty much sums up how it’s been over the past 6 weeks since this year’s Summer Soulstice. The event itself was another great fundraising success, however within 36 hours of it ending, some £45,000 from the day’s takings were stolen from the Old Elizabethans venue. This heartless act put both our funds to the charity & any future fundraising events by us at serious risk.

However, the response that followed has completely blown away everyone involved with both our event & at Cherry Lodge.

With our friends & followers almost demanding we set one up, we decided on a Crowd Funding page not long after the robbery to help us recover some of the stolen funds. After a lot of local media coverage including a report on ITV’s London Tonight & over 200,000 hits in a week to our Facebook posts, the response to our plea has been fantastic, with over 800 supporters donating nearly £27,500 to date! The success of the #SavingSoulstice fund has not only allowed us to continue & start to organise another event for 2019, but also means we can add a decent amount of funds to the many kind spin-off fundraisers that have been so quickly organised since the end of June.

These have included a Danceathon organised by Highstone Dance Academy & local cafe shop Coffee Bean, which saw 64 young young dancers take up the challenge to dance for two & a half hours. There was also a cake sale ‘baked up’ by Acculith 76 which included their children & friends helping out. Both were held on different days at The Spires Shopping Centre in July.

Special mentions also go out to the students at local schools JCoss & Livingstone Primary who put on respective fundraisers. Also to Pina, Tricia & all at Elstree Film Studios, & everyone who’s set up Justgiving pages to bolster funds for Cherry Lodge: Michael Tomlinson, Ben Bukowsi, the Good Times FB crew, Chase Farm Day Nursery & local band The False Dots.

The combined efforts of all the above means we will be able to hand over a large cheque for £35,000 at our Big Payback 2018  event at the end of August at The Black Horse, Barnet – click here for event details.

The Soulstice Crew would also like to thank Ray from Less Tax 2 Pay who donated security cameras & the team at London Eye CCTV Ltd who installed them at the OE’s site for free, a couple of weeks ago.

All of us at Soulstice HQ feel humbled, while at the same time, extremely blessed to be part of such an incredible community, both locally & within the Soul Family circles in the UK & beyond.

Our Crowd Funding page is due to stay live until 1st September, as we aim to reach our £30k target. If you would still like to donate, no matter how much, then please click on the button below, to be taken to our Just Giving Page.

SUMMER SOULSTICE 2018 CROWD FUND