What a great night we all enjoyed on Friday 8^th July at the White Rock Theatre!

The Rotary Club of Hastings Fund Raising Committee, led by their Chairman Dave Hooper, served up a storm! Dave also 'glued' the evening together as a masterful MC.

Thanks too, to our various sponsors anonymous and revealed for their generous support and to the structure of the funding of the event, we were able to sell the tickets for the event in the knowledge we were in credit from the start.

Some 336 children supported by nearly 500 adoring parents converged on the White Rock for the finals of the East Sussex Schools Choir Competition devised and staged by the Fund Raising Committee.

The evening took the form of performances by ten finalist schools who had been selected from all over East Sussex from as far afield as Lewes and Peacehaven and who converged on Hastings to sing and compete for the place of 1066 Choir 2011.

The winning school was Plumpton Primary School who delivered a delightful performance of Panis Angelicus and emerged as winners after protracted deliberations by the judges, Molly Townson, Kenneth Roberts and our own Peter Georgiadis, who, as they declared the results assured the finalists that in their collective view they were all winners.

The runner up, South Malling C of E Primary School gave us a lively rendition of Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious with a lot of action and had the audience in fits throughout.  The judges were enchanted by the performance but awarded first place to Plumpton.

The behaviour of the children was exemplary and talking to the White Rock afterwards it was marked that they too had enjoyed the experience and there were no problems with behaviour at all.

The evening was supported by our District Governor Lynn Mitchell, our MP Amber Rudd and the Deputy Mayor.

Both DG Lynn and President Brion spoke before the announcement of the winners and expressed their delight at the success of the evening and President Brion added that the Club had for some time been looking for a good fundraising function that could be repeated on an annual basis and he believed we had found that function.

The sensation of anticipation in the audience waiting for the judges' decision was palpable and was gently soothed by some fantastic performances of both dance and song by students from Laton Ash Dance.

I believe that although this function was a Fund Raising Committee led event credit must go to our MC and Chairman Dave Hooper, who pulled the whole event together and kept the Committee focused.

How much did we raise? I hear you ask!  At the time of going to press the final account is not yet completed but rumours abound that we will have exceeded our Christmas Collection!!  No doubt Dave will reveal that information at the next Club meeting.

Patrick Thomson

Fund Raising Committee. 10/7/11