Cassidy Guitars supports Echo100Plus on Leros

Those of you who know me well will know that I wouldn’t have been here if my Dad hadn’t been so lucky to survive the opening of the Battle of Leros on the morning of September 26th, 1943. So I have always felt a debt owed to the Island which you can find more on the facebook page I set up.

Leros is now facing another challenge as one of the Greek islands closest to Turkey, Leros has a burgeoning Migrant / Refugee population full of people who have nowhere to go. Consequently, they have been housed in a temporary migrant “hot spot” for a number of years now. A bad situation got worse in early September 2020 with an outbreak of Covid 19 resulting in the camp being locked down by the Greek Authorities.

Echo100Plus is a charity which has been supporting the crisis on Leros for the past 5 years.

Following the Covid 19 outbreak they launched an appeal to provide basic practical support (face masks / hand sanitiseres etc.) to the 1400 + residents of the Camp. We decided to support their campaign in 2 ways.

Firstly we invited donations to our Cassidy Guitars “Leros” Appeal with all proceeds to be given to Echo100Plus to support their work on Leros. For every £5 donated on this “Go Fund Me” page we allocated one ticket to be entered into a prize Draw which took place on 30th September 2020. The lucky winner would receive one of our Bluesville “Leros” BV301 Guitars.

Secondly we decided to donate an additional £100 to Echo100Plus from the the sale of every Bluesville “Leros” guitar via our website for the foreseeable future.

So in terms of our initial fundraisng Appeal we were pleased to contribute a modest £380 to Echo100Plus towards the supply of 1,400 Covid19 Protection Kits on Leros, and the lucky Winner of our Bluesville “Leros”  Guitar Prize Draw was longstanding Cassidy Guitar Studio Student Rick Butler. Rick made his donation and told me that he was lucky enough to already have more guitars than he needed (including 3 fine Cassidy Guitars) so if he was to win the Prize Draw he asked me to pass the Guitar Prize on to someone else.

I explained to Rick that Echo100Plus ran an Educational facility on Leros which included Music classes and suggested that if he did win we could donate the Guitar to them. Being a kind hearted soul, Rick agreed.

Catharina Kahane was delighted to receive our financial donation and the offer of the Prize “Leros” Guitar on behalf of Echo100Plus. In addition I have offered to deliver weekly on-line ZOOM Guitar Lessons beamed directly from The Cassidy Guitar Studio to the Echo Hub in Leros commencing in the next few weeks. I then hope to follow these up with in person face to face workshops when I next visit Leros.

In Catharina’s own words “Dear Simon, I don’t know what to say: this is amazing! Thank you so much for your generosity!… Regarding the kind offer to send a guitar, we would certainly gladly accept… The zoom guitar lesson would be amazing… And yes, face to face classes would be awesome! Do come when things relax again!… Thank you so much for your kindness! Hope to meet you one day on Leros!”