The Community Waffle House CIC (Waffle) have teamed up with an orphanage in Kenya to release a charity single, adapted from Band Aid’s “Do They Know It’s Christmas, in an emergency effort to raise money for the community following mass starvation in the area as a result of Covid-19.
The idea was the brainchild of Chelsea and Mike, two employees at Waffle in Axminster, East Devon. Having heard about the situation in Kenya as the nation shut down jobs and market places, and thousands of people were left without food, they teamed up with a colleague, Sophie, who also runs the charity, Awaken Love For Africa to try and raise £10,000 to support the Gideons Orphanage in Ramba, Kenya.
Following several weeks of rehearsing, recording, mixing and messaging across continents the result is a five minute song and music video which will be released on social media on Friday 10th December, with 100% of proceeds from sales and donations going directly to the orphanage.
The track has been produced from scratch by a dedicated team of musicians made up of staff, volunteers and friends of Waffle and features some of the Gideons children themselves. It will be available to buy or stream via Bandcamp for £4, with the hope that sales of the track will help provide a Christmas meal and a backpack to 800 children, most of whom have not had a chicken dinner in over a year.
The Charity are also hoping to send food packages home to 500 elderly and extremely poor people in the Gideons community, to support them for two weeks following Christmas.
Speaking of how the idea came about Mike, manager of Waffle, says: “Sophie’s work with the Gideon’s has really touched my heart and when Chelsea, suggested the we should record our own version of Band Aid’s Do They Know It’s Christmas? under the name of Waffle Aid, I took the idea, assembled a team from our community and we ran with it”.
Sophie McLachlan, co-founder of Awaken Love for Africa, is currently staying at the Gideon’s Orphanage after almost 2 years of not being able to travel due to Covid. “Everyone here is so excited to be in a ‘real-life’ music video! Over the years we have built up an amazing relationship between the community in East-Devon and the community here at Gideons and this honestly couldn’t come at a better time as we currently have no food in the storeroom”.