Radio Verulam, a non-profit radio station based in St Albans, needs your help – if you do not want to lose your local, community station and to support independent community organisations, then please donate to help keep the station alive well into the future.
Why not donate the money you would have spent on take-out coffees?
You can donate here : www.radioverulam.com/donate
Our volunteers are all recording programmes from home to keep you informed and entertained. Community radio is a valuable resource and now more than ever, you need local news, public health information, information on how to access services, entertainment and music.
We appreciate any amount and every bit does ensure we can stay on-air. We still need to meet our monthly bills of around £3,000, although we are trying to obtain any reliefs offered by the various Government schemes most do not apply to us as we are a volunteer-run organisation with no paid staff.
We had planned a number of fund-raising events this year to raise at least £12,000 towards the cost of replacement studio equipment but we have had to cancel all of these.
Radio Verulam St Albans and has been broadcasting locally now for 13 years on 92.6 FM. We are a volunteer-run 24/7 radio station with an award-winning community hub website, digital media coverage across Twitter, Instagram and Facebook and around 90 volunteers ranging in age from 18 to over 70 years old.
At present, we are working with and supporting: Communities 1st, St Albans City & District Council, Harpenden Town Council, the Citizens Advice Bureau, the Talking Newspaper and others including many local charities and businesses to help signpost our listeners – especially those who are classed as vulnerable – to where they can find help if needed.
Normally, our volunteers support over 45 programmes which are broadcast to the community every day of the week. However, we are now one of the only local radio stations in Hertfordshire, covering potentially 450,000 listeners across South Hertfordshire, and we are remote broadcasting during the lockdown.
Radio Verulam helps local voluntary and charitable organisations to promote themselves and we train local people to become radio presenters, with more than 60 people presenting programmes during our usual broadcasting.
Over the last few weeks, we have rearranged our schedule and equipped a core team of our volunteers so they can broadcast from their homes. This means that we are concentrating on the period from 6 am to 7 pm to provide a service of local news and information as well as entertainment for local residents across the District of St Albans and Hertsmere and surrounding areas of South Hertfordshire.
Additionally, we are maintaining our significant presence on our website and social media (Facebook, Twitter & Instagram) providing the same signposting information.
We are doing all this while our main income sources are drying up as our supporters such as local businesses are themselves finding life very difficult as many can no longer operate under current circumstances.
Please help keep this invaluable local service alive, donate anything – even the cost of two coffees will help!
