Back in November, there was a plan to organize a Christmas concert to raise money for charity. The event was highly anticipated but sadly, due to ongoing COVID-related issues, the show was postponed and ultimately canceled. However, not one to let a challenge dampen his spirit, our associate Miles Walsh came up with a plan — to write and produce an original Christmas song in the hopes of keeping the festive spirit alive and continuing the efforts to raise desperately needed funds for the community.
Miles put pen to paper and came up with ‘December Snow’ before sending out the call for collaboration to his colleagues. Dan Brown and Lesley Burrell answered, and together, they brought December Snow to life.
Miles, our Senior Business Analyst, has been with us for over ten years. He started displaying his musical talents with the recorder as a child, progressing to the clarinet in local orchestras and wind bands before teaching himself guitar. He also plays bass, keyboard, and drums.
Lesley has been part of our engineering department for just over a year. She has always had a keen interest in music and played the trumpet and guitar as a child before taking a hiatus, returning with a vengeance to take up the violin. Lesley has experimented with various musical genres (particularly progressive rock and jazz fusion) and currently plays classical music in the Northampton Symphony Orchestra.
Frontman Dan (also our Commercial Lead – Colocation Data Centre EMEA) has been part of the AFL family since 2008 and hadn’t originally planned on stepping into the limelight as lead singer. However, when the occasion called for it, Dan was happy to rise to the challenge in the name of a good cause! Dan is very passionate about helping others and has done a lot of incredible charity work over the years, including the ‘MK Festival of Running’.
The music video for ‘December Snow’ has amassed over 900 views on YouTube and raised an incredible £1,100 so far for Milton Keynes Food Bank.
Smashing through its initial target within 24hrs of going live, the fundraising target was then upped to £1,000, which was also exceeded.
The Food Bank has been supporting the Milton Keynes community with emergency food parcels since 2004 and is run solely by volunteers. They rely entirely on donations of food and money from local schools, churches, businesses, organisations and individuals. Every single item or penny given makes a difference.
Referral agencies identify families and individuals who need support and issue a voucher entitling them to a food parcel. In a ‘normal’ week, MK Food Bank distributes 400 food parcels for families and individuals in need across Milton Keynes. In December, this figure increased to over 600 parcels, and a total of 1,900 were supplied in the weeks running up to Christmas Eve.
The MK Food Bank team would like to say:
“Thanks to your generous fundraising efforts we can continue to help and support the community in 2022 in these difficult months ahead, with the increasing energy and benefit crisis, we rely on local supporters like yourselves to support our Food Bank users.”
There’s still time to donate if you haven’t done so already: https://localgiving.org/fundraising/afl-hyperscale/
Deadline for donations: 15th Jan 2022