First let me apologise for the lack of updates to our News site during the last few days, and to thank all of you have been in touch. I have been unable to reply to these messages until today as I have had no Internet connection.
Regular readers will know that both the Welsh Icons sites, Welsh Icons (the encyclopaedia of Wales) and Welsh Icons News (this site) have experienced various funding crises over the past few years.
I have tried to hide the extent of these problems in an attempt to make the organisation appear more attractive to potential advertisers and sponsors. For the first four years I funded Welsh Icons from my personal JobSeekers Allowance and for the last ten months I have been funding Welsh Icons via my Working Tax Credits.
At the start of the week (Monday 15 Nov) I paid our hosting bill of nearly £100 and then received another bill for £138 which I was unable to pay immediately which resulted in our main office (my bedroom) being disconnected from the Internet.
I get £51.91 a week to live on (that is less than £2,700 a year). Contrary to what you may have heard in the news recently, this is NOT a lifestyle choice, and with this money I have to cover all my household utility bills, food, clothing and transport. I also use this money to subsidise both Welsh Icons sites. All additional income I have received through commissions as a photographer and web designer have also been ploughed back in to Welsh Icons.
In the past two months I have experienced multiple computer failures, a blown ring main resulting in no power to the building and frequent ‘downgrading’ (a Virgin Media euphemism) of my Internet connection meaning that the sites cannot be updated and leaving us unable to communicate with the outside world.
I am incredibly proud of our team who work tirelessly to provide independent news and information from Wales but the time has come to go public and try and set Welsh Icons up on a proper footing as an independent source of information about Wales and what is happening in Wales.
If funding or revenues stream do not become available in the next six week I will be forced to stop all development work on the sites and no further content will be added.
It is said that the an indication of poverty is having to live on less than $1 a day and I promise you that for many days of the month I have to survive on less than this. I am lucky, I have a roof over my head but there are no frills. I cannot even afford to run a mobile phone and all our ICT equipment has been donated or lent to us by friends and supporters.
Please take a moment to read the following and see how you can help us to provide you with information and news from Wales.
Some facts about Welsh Icons
- Welsh Icons is a not-for-profit Social Enterprise helping to promote Wales and all things Welsh to our readers both in Wales and abroad.
- Welsh Icons is politically agnostic and is not affiliated with any political party or organisation.
- Last time we checked we were getting over 7 million hits a month.
- We have a policy of trying to include all charity and community news that we are sent even if it is just a coffee morning on your local village hall.
- There are over 5,500 pages on the main Welsh Icons site and the Welsh Icons News site contains some 14,000 pages of information.
- Our contributors include many seasoned journalists and photographers, many of whom do not even request a by-line. Other contributors have physical or mental heath problems and we are more than grateful for their submission. Some articles are also written by journalism students in Wales and we try and offer advice and mentoring where appropriate.
- We in the process of migrating many of out original pages to a new content management system which will allow us to update them in seconds
- Unlike many other websites Welsh Icons does not charge Welsh business to list on the site – Yes we do have Welsh butchers, Welsh bakers and Welsh candlestick makers listed on the sites.
How you can help
Donate
Just click on the ‘Donate’ button on the right hand side of every page on this site. Donations are processed by PayPal but you do not need a PayPal account to make a donation.
Employ Us
The team offer a wide range of services from copy-writing, photography, illustration and web design. See http://www.welshicons.org/services/ for details
Tell your Friends
Let people know what we are trying to achieve. On of the easiest ways of doing this is to join us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/welshicons and click on the ‘Suggest to Friends’ link on the left hand side of the page.
Notes:
Welsh Icons costs around £200 a month to run at the moment. None of the team draw a salary and all cover their own expenses
Please do not tell us that we can get cheaper hosting. We have been down this road many times and have found that due to the number of people using the site we require a dedicated host. Most of the offers of unlimited bandwidth and unlimited disk space come with some sort of ‘hidden’ caveat about CPU usage. We are tied into a contract with our current provider for another 6 months
We are currently investigating setting Welsh Icons up as a registered charity if a sustainable source of revenue/funding becomes available.
