Feed a Family: Radio heroes prepare to help campaign with marathon broadcast

Gulshan Radio 106.9FM, based in Parkfields in Wolverhampton, has a long-standing history of charity work in the region through the completion of fundraising challenges and donations to charities and people in need.

This included an 11-hour marathon broadcast by station chairman Gulshan Dhingra in July 2020 which helped to raise £1,111.11 for the Midland Air Ambulance Charity and a donation of 101 bags of food and essential items.

Mr Dhingra will be taking on another marathon broadcast on December 12, broadcasting alongside his wife Kulwinder Heer Dhingra on a 12-hour, 12-minute broadcast with an aim of raising £1,200 for the Feed a Family campaign.

He said he had been inspired to help the campaign after seeing the effect it was having in the community.

He said: "In the community at the moment, there are a lot of problems with the cost of living and we've seen the work that the Government has been doing to try and fix it, but it's a big challenge.

"That's what got us thinking about things we could do to help and when I do the breakfast show, I promote the Express & Star to our listeners, who are mostly south Asian and don't know a lot about what is happening in the local area.

"I think the paper does a very good job and when I saw the Feed a Family campaign was starting up, I wanted to help to raise funds and donations for it."

Mr Dhingra said the idea of the broadcast and the fundraising campaign was to raise £1,200 and any donations of food and essential items which came into the station and give them to the Express & Star to distribute as it saw fit.

He said: "What happened the last time we did fundraising, a lot of people donated food and money to us and we distributed from there, so we want to do that again.

"We'd like to give it all to the Express & Star as that would be better for how it can be distributed as they know who actually needs food and help.

"We really do like the Feed a Family campaign as we think it is very genuine and really helps people who need it most."

Mr Dhingra said the broadcast would include a mixture of music and chat with different shows during the day and an announcement each hour to ask people to donate and provide food and funds to the appeal.

He said: "People can donate to us by bank transfer or they can come to our studios and donate the food there, following the list in the Express & Star as to what is needed.

"It's nice to be able to do something like this and fits what we do as a Community Radio Station."

To find out more about Gulshan Radio and about the broadcast, go to gulshanradio.co.uk.