Can you make a lifelong memory for $5?

Yes, yes you can. Hang on, for those who don't read subject lines, I'm just going to do a spot of textual throat clearing –

GENUINELY IMPORTANT POST, PLEASE READ

Thanks, chaps and chapettes, sorry for the complete lack of subtlety, but this one really is on the more important side of the things you will read here.

It's about Christchurch, New Zealand, and a bunch of teenagers known as the Linwood College Orchestra. They go to a Christchurch school that is nice, but poor (and currently closed until it can pass building inspection). It has kids from all sorts of backgrounds, with not a lot of cash, but with really fantastic teachers and an arts programme that keeps kids massively motivated to both attend school and achieve academically.

Most of the kids in the orchestra can't afford to own their own instruments, but the school has a good rental system and a music director, Tony Ryan, who has spent the last 30 years building something truly special. For a taste of what they can do, click here and enjoy a couple of the orchestra videos.

My friends Peter and Vicki Hyde are two of the Linwood parents and like most of the school community they've spent the last two years trying to raise money to send the orchestra on an Invitational Tour of Europe. It's an amazing trip – Paris, Rome, Bucharest – culminating in a performance at Westminster Abbey on Anzac Day. This last is a massive thing in itself, more on that below.

With enormous amounts of support from the local community, and an incredible number of sausage sizzles, cake stalls, busking days and calendar sales, they'd raised most of the funds for the trip but were still NZ$50,000 short. They had every confidence they would be able to raise this in the big efforts they had planned for the last month and a half before the kids set off.

Until their city was torn apart on the 22nd of February by a massive earthquake that has claimed hundreds of lives and left thousands without homes and workplaces. Even the theatre where they were to have played a gala fundraising concert is now unusable.

And look, I know that it's natural to think that perhaps this is a little thing in the face of such destruction. But I would ask you to think back to your childhood – for many of us our most abiding memories are those of dreams fulfilled or dreams denied. These kids and their families have all spent the last two years working very hard for the dream of touring cities most of them have only heard of and playing in places many of them have never even seen on television.

They have gone from holding occasional cake sales to help poorer kids with instrument rentals to raising NZ$150,000 in the last two years. They slaved themselves out to stack shelves in shops for cash. The kids have sat through endless rehearsals and their parents have ferried them to endless concerts (as well as eating an unholy amount of cake and buying fundraising calendars as gifts for almost everyone they know) for two years, all because at the end of that time there would be the fulfillment of a dream.

Now they stand to lose it all because there is no way to make up the remainder of the sum needed in their local community. And they need dreams now. The school has lost one of its students, many of the kids have lost homes, for the rest there is an incredible amount of destruction to the daily traffic of life, from suburbs still largely cut off by impassable roads to parents who no longer have a place of work.

Fifty thousand New Zealand dollars will pick up an orchestra's worth of children and reassure them that hard work is rewarded. But it will also let the people of Christchurch know that they have people looking out for them, well beyond the initial shock that we all felt and expressed when we saw the disaster unfold on our television screens a fortnight ago.

What would be terrific is if you could not buy a cup of coffee today, and maybe not tomorrow either, but instead, follow the links to the credit card donation or Paypal account below and donate that $5 to Linwood College. And if you could grab a few of your mates at work, or a few of your friends and family, and ask them to do the same thing.

Because the thing is -- it's not that much money. If everyone here could give just $5 US or Australian (3.62 euros or £3.12), that would be over NZ$3900. The brilliant femmequixotic , shezan  and wemyss  have already talked about this on their LJs and it would be wonderful for others to boost the signal. And if each of us can then prod another three people to give the same, and they each prod another three – we're there. We'll have provided a young Kiwi musician with a lifetime of brilliant memories – and a break from the everyday crap that they have at the moment – for coffee money.

To reach the credit card or Paypal button, click here for the appeal's emergency website. It's being hosted by the Hydes who are real people that I know well in real life and who are a trusted part of the school community. They're a bit amazing and I will talk a little bit more about them under the cut, too.

If you have just had a very successful day at the horses, or belong to an organisation that might be able to sponsor the school, or else live in New Zealand, there are also more details below the cut.

Thank you for reading this far, and thank you a thousandfold if you're currently deciding that you can cope with crappy instant coffee for a couple of days if it can do that much good.


( More payment options and school contacts )

( On ANZAC Day )

( The Hydes )

( More on the orchestra )

Can you make a lifelong memory for $5?

Yes, yes you can. Hang on, for those who don't read subject lines, I'm just going to do a spot of textual throat clearing –

GENUINELY IMPORTANT POST, PLEASE READ

Thanks, chaps and chapettes, sorry for the complete lack of subtlety, but this one really is on the more important side of the things you will read here.

It's about Christchurch, New Zealand, and a bunch of teenagers known as the Linwood College Orchestra. They go to a Christchurch school that is nice, but poor (and currently closed until it can pass building inspection). It has kids from all sorts of backgrounds, with not a lot of cash, but with really fantastic teachers and an arts programme that keeps kids massively motivated to both attend school and achieve academically.

Most of the kids in the orchestra can't afford to own their own instruments, but the school has a good rental system and a music director, Tony Ryan, who has spent the last 30 years building something truly special. For a taste of what they can do, click here and enjoy a couple of the orchestra videos.

My friends Peter and Vicki Hyde are two of the Linwood parents and like most of the school community they've spent the last two years trying to raise money to send the orchestra on an Invitational Tour of Europe. It's an amazing trip – Paris, Rome, Bucharest – culminating in a performance at Westminster Abbey on Anzac Day. This last is a massive thing in itself, more on that below.

With enormous amounts of support from the local community, and an incredible number of sausage sizzles, cake stalls, busking days and calendar sales, they'd raised most of the funds for the trip but were still NZ$50,000 short. They had every confidence they would be able to raise this in the big efforts they had planned for the last month and a half before the kids set off.

Until their city was torn apart on the 22nd of February by a massive earthquake that has claimed hundreds of lives and left thousands without homes and workplaces. Even the theatre where they were to have played a gala fundraising concert is now unusable.

And look, I know that it's natural to think that perhaps this is a little thing in the face of such destruction. But I would ask you to think back to your childhood – for many of us our most abiding memories are those of dreams fulfilled or dreams denied. These kids and their families have all spent the last two years working very hard for the dream of touring cities most of them have only heard of and playing in places many of them have never even seen on television.

They have gone from holding occasional cake sales to help poorer kids with instrument rentals to raising NZ$150,000 in the last two years. They slaved themselves out to stack shelves in shops for cash. The kids have sat through endless rehearsals and their parents have ferried them to endless concerts (as well as eating an unholy amount of cake and buying fundraising calendars as gifts for almost everyone they know) for two years, all because at the end of that time there would be the fulfillment of a dream.

Now they stand to lose it all because there is no way to make up the remainder of the sum needed in their local community. And they need dreams now. The school has lost one of its students, many of the kids have lost homes, for the rest there is an incredible amount of destruction to the daily traffic of life, from suburbs still largely cut off by impassable roads to parents who no longer have a place of work.

Fifty thousand New Zealand dollars will pick up an orchestra's worth of children and reassure them that hard work is rewarded. But it will also let the people of Christchurch know that they have people looking out for them, well beyond the initial shock that we all felt and expressed when we saw the disaster unfold on our television screens a fortnight ago.

What would be terrific is if you could not buy a cup of coffee today, and maybe not tomorrow either, but instead, follow the links to the credit card donation or Paypal account below and donate that $5 to Linwood College. And if you could grab a few of your mates at work, or a few of your friends and family, and ask them to do the same thing.

Because the thing is -- it's not that much money. If everyone here could give just $5 US or Australian (3.62 euros or £3.12), that would be over NZ$3900. The brilliant femmequixotic , shezan  and wemyss  have already talked about this on their LJs and it would be wonderful for others to boost the signal. And if each of us can then prod another three people to give the same, and they each prod another three – we're there. We'll have provided a young Kiwi musician with a lifetime of brilliant memories – and a break from the everyday crap that they have at the moment – for coffee money.

To reach the credit card or Paypal button, click here for the appeal's emergency website. It's being hosted by the Hydes who are real people that I know well in real life and who are a trusted part of the school community. They're a bit amazing and I will talk a little bit more about them under the cut, too.

If you have just had a very successful day at the horses, or belong to an organisation that might be able to sponsor the school, or else live in New Zealand, there are also more details below the cut.

Thank you for reading this far, and thank you a thousandfold if you're currently deciding that you can cope with crappy instant coffee for a couple of days if it can do that much good.


( More payment options and school contacts )

( On ANZAC Day )

( The Hydes )

( More on the orchestra )