Although the Youth Orchestras continue to receive generous support in many ways from Southampton Music Services, we also need extra sources of income, for example:

• to help with the costs of specialist sectional support at rehearsals
• to buy or hire additional music or instruments
• to subsidise workshops and residential courses
• other unexpected expenses that may arise from time to time

Requests such as these could come from any of our ensembles, from the junior string groups up to SYO. We hope we will always be able to give support when needed.

Through an organisation called buy.at, we have special arrangments with certain retailers and suppliers of goods and services for both players and their families. If you visit the retailers' sites from a link on the FSYO website (or from the dedicated URL www.buy.at/fsyo) and then make a purchase, FSYO will get a commission, usually somewhere between 1% and 10% of the purchase price, or occasionally a fixed amount. In each case the link takes you to the 'normal' retail site with exactly the same goods and prices as if you had navigated there direct. To earn the commission however, you must access the retail site via a link on this or another fsyo.org.uk page.

buy.at is a portal linking to a wide range of e-retailers' sites, the majority of which are household names. Get straight there by clicking the logo at the top of this page, or just go to www.buy.at/fsyo, and search for:

• Books, CDs, DVDs plus DVD rental
• Games and gadgets
• Insurance (home, motor, pet, student...) and other financial products
• Gas and electricity suppliers
• Stationery, office products, printer cartriges
• Fashion (women's, men's, kids', everyone's...)
• Health and beauty
• Sports and outdoor equipment
• Holiday breaks, flights, hotels, camping and cottage/gîte rental
• Food, wine and nibbles from both specialists and supermarkets
• Mobile phones and broadband services
• Photography
• Magazine subscriptions
• Toys and 'nursery'
• National Express, National Lottery and National Trust

The credit crunch is still affecting many families, encouraging people to re-think how they save and spend. As an alternative to traditional birthday and wedding presents, please consider Oxfam Unwrapped. A relatively modest gift could make an immense difference to another community. (One of our orchestra parents 'received' a bog - of the latrine variety - for his birthday. You can see details on Oxfam Unwrapped DIYer's page.)