October 11, 2010—Roughly $500, a good start

So as I have told many of you in emails and on my last blog post I am working with a hospice center here in Taraclia named Angelus Moldova.  I told you that I would update you on the progress of the organization over the coming months so that you understand the problems faced by them.

On Saturday we celebrated our one-year anniversary as an established organization in Moldova.  We marked this anniversary by holding a concert at the local House of Culture.  The House of Culture in most Moldovan cities and towns is where most cultural events take place, our HOC happens to have the local library and a few other uses whereas the smaller villages usually just have an area for dancing or important meetings.  It is a very useful service that the HOC provides, usage of the facilities is free and they even staff the event by providing MCs and sound system people—a huge plus when trying to keep the costs down for a benefit concert.

For the past two months we have been organizing the event which really has consisted of finding musical groups and dance groups to perform for free for our concert.  Overall I would say that the concert was a success, we raised roughly $500 which is not too shabby for a small town in Moldova.  The biggest problem that we had was the weather which was rather dismal. We practically sold all 500 seats in the auditorium for the concert, but since the weather was so bad only about 150-200 people showed up.  It is most important in the short-term to raise the money, but the long-term scenario is more important in getting out the message of hospice care in Moldova.  The local television station was there and interviewed a few of the relatives of former patients of the center.  This special should air on TV sometime soon.  Maybe if I can get an electronic copy of it I will post it on here with some subtitles.

Here is the link for donating to my project here as well:
https://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=resources.donors.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=261-204

Here are some pictures and videos of the event:

This is a short video of one of the singers from our last act Crystal:

This is the other singer from the Crystal group, this kid is the man:

A local dance group who danced too fast my little ol' camera:

An early act:

A younger dance team from a nearby city:

 Local Musicians: