Singathons

Our biggest fundraisers of the year are the Singathon's. These are held at the Brookfield Centre in Cheshunt, generally a Saturday in the spring or summer and lasting a full twelve hours! Another annual open air event for us is the Borough Of Broxbourne Open Day in July each year. We sing here, not only to enjoy ourselves but to promote The Capel Players to charitable organisations who would like us to sing for them.

In May 2001, our Singathon was for the Ataxia charity, which supports sufferers and funds research into incurable nervous system disorders (see Photo's page for Presentation pic). Our donation was to the fund supporting Friedrichs Ataxia, which mainly affects children. The day was a bit wet and chilly for May as I recall, but nevertheless 12 hours later, we were satisfied that we had not only raised hundreds of pounds, but also a bit more awareness of the charity itself. Unfortunately it isn't very widely known although this country alone has thousands of sufferers.

In 2002, on a lovely warm June day, we were back and this time the charity was the Special Care Baby Unit at Chase Farm Hospital in Enfield. Many parents and their babies, former patients of the unit, came along to give us their support by helping with the collection buckets or singing along. It was fantastic. However, the Centre went a bit quiet around 2pm as it was the same day as the England-Holland world cup match! There were still a few non footie fans around during the match for us to sing to, and our Andy had his radio on and was keeping us appraised of the score! England won! Once the match was over, hundreds of happy shoppers came flooding back and generously filled our collection buckets. The charity was obviously very dear to people's hearts and on the day, we collected nearly £2000! Each of our members had collected sponsors and with a generous donation from Tesco's, the final total of the day was in excess of £3,500. We had never before raised an amount like this in one day and were overjoyed. We were very proud when the SPBU told us they had managed to buy a whole Jaundice Machine with the proceeds from our Singathon. THAT is what it's all about. That's why we love being in The Capel Players! Press Release