The September 2024 issue of National Kidney Federation's In Touch Newsletter features a report about August's Kent Kidney Fest event.
The text of the article reads as follows,
KPA of the Month - Kent KPA Hits the Right Notes with Kidney Music Festival
"Our first Kent Kidney Fest music festival was held on Sunday 18th August. It was a free event for patients, staff and their families. Our funding came solely from grants and donations. We were awarded discounts from local food vendors and the Sittingbourne Rugby Club allowed us to use their field and clubhouse for our event and their clubhouse bar (which came fully staffed). We were also awarded a 100% discount on the music license for our event by PPL PRS Ltd, which saved our charity a lot of money.
The inspiration came when my wife and I attended a music festival last year and left feeling so uplifted by the music and atmosphere. I wanted to bring this same feeling to our patients; a day to forget the stresses that living with CKD can bring to our lives. A lot of our patients are on a low income and with the cost of living being so high now, we knew the only way to give our patients a true festival style experience would be if we made it a free event to include food and games.
Sadly, this time, our funding could only stretch to 250 attendees, but we hope to be able to raise more funding so that we can open it up to more attendees next year, as the demand for tickets was high and we had a waiting list and unfortunately, quite a few patients had to miss out.
This was Kent KPA's biggest project to date and without our secretary Clare organising the food vendors, giant inflatables (bouncy castle, football darts, nerf gun range and wipeout), DJ, bands and solo performers, it would not have happened.
We also needed a lot of volunteers on the day, some of the KKPA committee members stepped up, along with their friends and family. We also had volunteers from our local Rotary Club. Without them the day would not have run so smoothly.
It was a great day and fun was also had by all that attended. We have received lots of positive feedback from both staff and patients and would love to be able to do it again, provided we can find the much-needed funding.
A big thank you must also go to Peter Revell from NKF, who emailed us a list of Trust that we could apply for grants through, which we successfully did"
Lu Molina
Kent KPA
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