Club scraps charity gig at 11th hour

Published on Tuesday 9 March 2010 09:16

A TEENAGER has hit out at a nightclub after her charity gig was cancelled at the last minute, leaving her out of pocket.

Schoolgirl Annaliese Shishodia organised the event to raise money for Project Trust, an educational charity she plans to volunteer for in Peru later this year.

But she claims she was told just hours before it was due to go ahead that it was being cancelled because of licensing issues with under-18s at the event.

With a quarter of her fundraising hopes tied up in the cancelled gig at the city's GRV venue, the teenager fears she might not raise enough money in time to go out to Peru in August, where she plans to work in an orphanage for a year.

The Trinity High pupil spent weeks organising the gig, arranged local musicians to play for free and sold 200 tickets, with a further 100 expected to sell on the door.

She said she was 40 out of pocket after paying for posters to be printed for the gig, at the Guthrie Street venue.

The 17-year-old said: "The worst case scenario is that I can't go to Peru and I have wanted to do this for ages.

"I've been fundraising in other ways but this was supposed to be my biggest fundraising event, raising the bulk of my money. I expected to raise 1,200.

"If I'd have known it would get cancelled, I wouldn't have been so calm about fundraising.

"They were aware that there would be mostly under-18s there but phoned me two hours before we were supposed to do the sound check to say that it couldn't go ahead. I was livid and distraught.

"I had to then try and contact everyone to let them know it was cancelled."

The teenager, who lives in Trinity, is desperately trying to arrange an alternative gig in a bid to raise the funds, but says everywhere she has tried is booked up.

Despite her best efforts to raise money so far through bake sales at her school and applying to charitable trusts, she has so far only managed to raise 850 and has missed her first deadline of raising 1,700 by the end of February.

Annaliese added: "I'm trying to get another hall to put on another gig because it's the best way of raising a lot of money.

"But I need to do it soon to get the money into the Project Trust and I'm getting worried that I'm not going to be able to do it."

No-one from the nightclub could be contacted for comment.