BISYOC News - Merry Christmas

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BISYOC
European Intercultural Youth Orchestra

- Connecting through music -

Dear BISYOC-Family,

We hope that despite these hard times, you and your loved ones are doing well and our thoughts are with those who have been directly affected.
If 2020 has taught us anything it is that culture is essential. Culture has connected us with others while we were isolated and strengthened and sustained us, even at a ‘social’ distance. Culture is a source of comfort and joy and, at BISYOC we try to connect our different cultures through music.

As you know, this was our first year as a team and we have decided to share it with you. While physical meetings were not possible, we – the team – met regularly online to plan, discuss and work on the next year’s summer course. As you know, there has not been a summer course in 2020 and you may be wondering what we have been doing all year. We established a new charity in Germany for easier access to EU funds. Founding a new society brings a lot of administrative work, getting a tax number, setting up bank accounts, and generally a lot of decisions and paperwork. After we were founded, we went to launch a new website. If you haven’t check it out yet, do it now! https://bisyoc.eu/. Thanks also to everyone who contributed with a testimonial. (Check them out here.) With all this set-aside, our efforts are now fully focussed on getting funds for the 2021 summer course. And for this, we need your help (more on that below).

Death of Peter Gibbons

With great sadness, we have to announce the death of Peter Gibbons. Many of you likely know him personally as he was a driving force behind BISYOC for all of its history up until now. Julian’s father established the British BISYOC charity and was its chairman for many years. He and his wife Jenny visited almost all the summer courses. During these visits his passion for music always made him seem so lively, enjoying every single moment of BISYOC.
We want to honour his tireless efforts by initiating a bursary fund (social scholarship) in his name. This fund will be used to support participants from economically less privileged backgrounds and allow them to come to BISYOC.
If you want to honour Peter Gibbons’ effort to keep BISYOC running, please visit https://bisyoc.eu/peter-gibbons-bursary-fund and donate for his cause.

To find out more about the story behind these pictures, visit the Peter Gibbons Bursary Fund webpage.

Support Us

No matter if you are a past participant, a parent or grandparent, a friend or just someone who is interested in music and intercultural exchange, we need you all! If you are wondering how you can help, here are some ideas:

1) Become a charity member. By becoming a member, you are not only supporting us with a small membership fee, but you also send a signal to potential sponsors that there are people out there who care so much about the future of BISYOC that they are willing to give a little bit of their own hard-earned money.
We know that, especially in hard times like these, it is a big thing to ask for you to share some of your money. But BISYOC needs you and the time to act is NOW.

Become a Member

2) If you cannot donate yourself, try to convince at least two friends to become members or donate. After all, YOU are the best ambassadors we have for BISYOC. There is a reason that you decided to subscribe to this mailing list. You know how amazing BISYOC is. Share it. The more people we reach the better!

Donate

3) Some other ideas on how you can support us are:

Join our team.
Dedicate your online concert, event or album release to BISYOC.

BISYOC Time of the Year Survey
You can also help us by filling out the survey below. BISYOC has traditionally been held the last week of July and the first week of August. Since some people approached us, saying this is not a good time, we want to give you the opportunity to give feedback to us. This feedback will be the basis of the years to come and is very important for our planning. It takes less than 2 minutes, so please do it right now!

BISYOC Time of the Year Survey

We are looking for help in fundraising
As you know, BISYOC is reliant on external funds. We are looking for someone who helps us with fundraising.
If you yourself, or someone you know might be motivated to join our team as a fundraiser let us know and talk to them. Ideally, you already have some experience in fundraising. But more importantly, is that you are motivated and that you actively want to engage in the BISYOC team.

Top Five New Christmas Songs of 2015 | CBN.com

We wish you a Merry Christmas and good health!
The BISYOC Board

Jonas Bösken, Paula Escudero, Lee Ferguson, Georg Jaeschke, Aïcha Naumann and Helga Zuccaro

The newsletter
Since we currently have two newsletter lists (old and new) you might have received two newsletters. This is the new list. Within the next year you might still receive newsletters from both lists until we shut down our old list. Feel free to unsubscribe from your old list.
If you know someone who would like to receive our newsletter but has not received it, please forward it and ask them to subscribe to the new list.