Grand Bingo Supper Evening

This fund raising event was held at the state-of-the-art Jewish Free School (JFS) in Kenton on Sunday May 22nd 2005. Nearly 300 people attended, giving generous donations for the JDA. About 25 Deaf JDA members took part and occupied two tables at the front, near the stage in the assembly hall, where they could see the interpreters and lipspeaker clearly.

The Bingo Caller was Ricky Denton, who works at the Mecca Bingo Hall in Wood Green. Ricky won an award in 2004 as UK Bingo Caller of the Year. He very kindly gave his services to JDA free of charge for this event. For the benefit of all the Deaf members, there was a Bingo display machine on stage, which showed the numbers at the same time as the caller announced them. There was also a very big screen on the stage, with enormous numbers for everyone to see! This was extremely helpful to the hard of hearing people elsewhere in the large hall.

The two interpreters, Rita Norman and Jo Meyer, were superb in making sure the Deaf people followed everything that was going on throughout the evening.

Fish and chips and salads were served first, followed by delicious fruit and coffee. Then the Grand Bingo started, much to the excitement of everyone in the hall with their bingo tickets and pens perched ready to go. At first, some of the hearing people made mistakes, as they did not know how to play bingo. They really needed the assistance of Deaf people to sort them out as Bingo is our favourite game! However, things were smoothed out and there were many winners.

Two Deaf members, Mira Goldberg and Lorraine Silver, won Marks and Spencer tokens for completing two lines at different times. They were sitting next to each other rubbing luck on each other!

Later in the evening, there was a raffle with people donating 20 pound notes with their names on. There were lots of prizes given. The event finished at 11pm!

Many thanks to the Hear!Hear! Committee and to those JDA staff who worked so hard to arrange this very enjoyable and successful fundraising event. Thanks also to all the people who supported this event by buying tickets, sponsoring tables and making donations to JDA.

The total raised was £13,500 !!! This money will be put towards taxi and minibus costs for Deaf people who cannot travel to JDA on their own.

Kay Kaufman