African Children's Choir finds hope in song
Their smiling faces and soaring voices belie the suffering they have endured. Poverty and AIDS have taken an enormous human toll in Africa, where there are millions and millions of orphans of the twin travesties, especially in sub-Saharan Africa. To the young members of the African Children's Choir, those aren't just numbers: They're personal heartaches. Every one of the choir's members has lost at least one parent to AIDS or poverty.
But it's through their music that these young students have hope. For more than 20 years, the African Children's Choir, a nonprofit foundation, has funded the education and dreams of thousands of African children by not only establishing schools for them, but providing them with food, shelter and funding for their education through college.
The 28th African Children's Choir will sing to audiences in Hamilton and Missoula in four concerts at three churches over the next week. This choir - there are three altogether, touring the globe - consists entirely of children, ages 7 to 11, from Uganda, a landlocked east African country that has, unlike most of Africa, developed a successful national AIDS policy. The children arrived in North America on Thursday. Western Montana is one of their first stops on a long U.S. tour, said Dawna Hodgins, out of the choir's Bellingham, Wash., office.
Between performances, the children attend classes, Hodgins said. Wherever they go, they stay with host families, as they will in Missoula. The choir performs for audiences all over the world. The group gained a worldwide audience in July 2005 when they sang alongside Mariah Carey and Paul McCartney at the Live 8 London concert for Africa.
The first choir formed and toured in 1984, after human rights worker Ray Barnett traveled to Uganda to research a book about the dictatorship and violence that had left the country in ruins. Each child, after a yearlong tour, returns to Africa, where the African Children's Choir has established numerous schools and children's homes in seven countries. (Missoulian)
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