Our own experience at either hosting or taking part at events in support of disadvantaged children and young people has gone beyond seeing the benefits of trying something different and making a great noise, it’s been immeasurably rewarding, leaving us and all with a great feeling of bringing happiness and smiles to our community and in doing so helping to make difference in our society.
For Batala Mersey, “community is everything” and the band has had the privilege of not only taking part in several community events in and around Liverpool in the wide Merseyside Region, UK, but also has hosted workshops such as the one run in 2015, at EDDA (Norse for knowledge) a community library and local centre for those with learning disabilities.
The workshop at Ainsdale was enormous fun for the participants as well as for band members. There were some budding stars among those taking part and at the end many participants didn’t want the band to leave.
Our community commitment has meant that yearly we organise and run our own fundraising for local charities. The last two were especially in benefit of organisations supporting disadvantaged children, so we fundraised for the charity KIND in 2019, the last before the pandemic and for Daffodils Dreams, our own first fundraising after the pandemic when we were allowed to perform again in public.
We have also been invited to support children’s activities such as Speke Adventure Playground “Freedom Fun Day”where the young ones could also take part in testing what drumming is like.
We have also provided an opportunity for young ones to join us at a rehearsal in a local park in a deprived community in Liverpool.
In 2019 we were invited by BBC to take part in the promo campaign of BBC’s Children in Need in 2019.