Voices of Hope

On Friday, February 20th Eastview High School held their first sing-a-thon entitled Voices of Hope which was organized by Women's Chorale. With the help of Judy Sagen, their Choir Director, they were able to have performers from all over Minnesota to raise money for the Angel Foundation to help the families of cancer patients. A lot of hard work and effort was put into this event by students and directors to make this possible, and they brought the community together to support a worthy cause. The 14-hour sing-a-thon went from eight am to midnight. Brooke Kilgarriff, Miss Twin Cities and former Eastview student, was the announcer for this event and sang the national anthem as well.

All throughout the school day, classes were brought down to watch the fundraiser and help bring the spirit of the event alive. The 640 seats approximately were filled in the theater. Everyone was respectful and enjoyed watching the performers.

“When Words Fail, music speaks.” Said Judy Sagen as the fundraiser began. This was the phrase that kept going throughout the day. With over 80 groups and soloists, adding up to be over 300 performers, were performing in Voices of Hope, Judy Sagen was hoping to raise $25,000 for these families and patients. They had about 75 volunteers, 25 parents and 50 students, helping make this event happen smoothly and efficiently.

"We've got some janitors, a couple math teachers, the Japanese classes are going to come sing in Japanese," said Katherine Hove, a senior in the women's chorale who helped organize the event. The attendance ladies at Eastview plan to do a song from "Mamma Mia!" with feather boas, she said. And that's on top of master vocalists such as Robert Robinson and Maria Jette. Along with Spanish classes, Middle school choirs, and other choir classes from Eastview sang at this event.

One choir in particular, The Falcon Ridge Middle School Choir and their director, Mr. Scarr donated $205 to the Angel foundation. All choirs seemed to be grateful and appreciative to help support this cause and highly respect Mrs. Sagen and Mr. Douma for bringing this event to life.

Hannah Skalbeck, a member of Woman’s Chorale, is one of the many students who are affected by cancer in some way. Her mother, Joan, was diagnosed with stage-2 Pancreatic Cancer and was said to only have three to six months left to live. Hannah dedicated her song to her mother, in hopes of reaching this goal of $25,000, her and the 53 other members of Woman’s Chorale joined her on stage again for their choir’s piece.

Mrs. Sagen said “I think Voices of Hope was a complete success, absolutely. Our goal was to raise money and that’s what we did.” She didn’t know the exact amount of money raised for the foundation but she will find out shortly.