Children’s charity in appeal for funds help
Amberliegh has temporarily suspended its guitar and piano lessons
Friday, 24th January — By Frankie Lister-Fell
Parents pay £5 for lessons at Amberliegh – a huge reduction in the normal cost of music tuition
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FUNDRAISING has become “very difficult” for the year ahead, a children’s charity warned this week.
Amberliegh, a music and performance charity based in Highbury for disadvantaged kids, said it requires financial support in order for it to continue its services in 2025.
It has temporarily suspended its guitar and piano lessons for the next month.
Operations and funding manager Akunna Nwanna-Skeete said: “We’ve had lots of funders, but it’s more competitive now. There are a lot of funders that have lost their investors so they can’t fund charities. There was one funder who we had regularly for 10 years but they lost their investor so they have no money so they can’t fund us.
“There are others who only fund big charities. We’re very small, but we’ve done a hell of a lot for our community. We’re not massive and we don’t want to be.
“We want to impact the local community and impact people who aren’t seen but because we are small it’s hard to get those big trusts and big companies and get money from them because they don’t know us.
“Because of that we’re finding it very difficult to get funding from people we used to get funding from. This limits what we can do which is not good for our kids.”
Amberliegh run a donation-based piano class twice a week for 12 children aged eight to 16, and a weekly guitar group class once a week. Parents pay £5 if they’re able to – significantly less than the cost for music lessons in school.
Ms Nwanna-Skeete said: “If they want to do piano and guitar lessons at school it’s actually quite expensive. For piano lessons it’s £200-plus per term, because of that they can’t really afford to do that.”
She said the children love the lessons and it’s sad to see the classes temporarily suspended. “We’ve had so much positive feedback on children that have performed at assemblies at school at other events,” she said.
The charity is currently in the process of organising a performance to raise money. The last fundraiser they held, in 2016, saw their ambassadors Leona Lewis and Jermain Jackman take to the stage.
You can donate to Amberliegh by visiting: https://www.gofundme.com/f/amberliegh-childrens-charity-needs-your-support
