On Sunday the 4^th of July 2010, 6 girls and 3 boys from the WAIT team along with Uncle Marshall De Souza and Auntie Naomi Sato set up a stall and performed at the Church Street Festival for the second time, as we had also participated last year. The WAIT team performed both the Rose dance and the Red & White dance. At the stall we set up our posters and advertising and fundraising materials inform the people in the festival about WAIT and especially youth, to inspire them to join.

As well as promoting awareness of WAIT stands for and does, we also helped to raise funds by the selling the Small Charities Prize Draw raffle tickets, in which 95% of the funds raised would go to WAIT - the prize being a Mini First car. We managed to sell a number of raffle tickets that day, after the performance. We also did some general fundraising as well.

Even though we had bumps along the day, we also received blessings. For instance, at first our stall was situated under the gaze of the hot sun, with no shelter, but afterwards we were invited to move under a white tent, which was much more convenient as we were protected from the sun and the location was more in the centre of Church Street – better to meet passers by. Amongst the people we met, was a nice lady from St Marylebone’s Girls School in Westminster. She is a mentor to students there, and was particularly interested in our method of using the Performing Arts to educate youth and develop better behaviour. She gave us her contact details so we will get back to her with the hope of visiting St Marylebone in the near future.

All in all, we achieved our goals in going to the Festival - raising some funds, gaining contacts of people interested in WAIT, performing to the public and receiving a good reception afterwards.

By Elizabeth Wiedicke