A full 99% of the Roberts Creek Community Choir’s fees and donations go to our chosen cause. The first project we supported was a local initiative that helps single mothers. Currently we are sponsoring impoverished girls in their secondary education in rural Kenya. Canadian Harambee Education Society (CHES) is a non-profit girls education program in Kenya for which I have been a spokesperson and fundraiser for several years. I will spend six months in Kakamega, Kenya from March through September 2007 as a volunteer for CHES. For more information on CHES, visit www.canadianharambee.ca.

My involvement in CHES has been a source of inspiration for the Song Circle participants and indeed, several of them have taken upon themselves the personal sponsorship of a student and others are making plans to volunteer in Kenya at a later date. Our greatest joy, however, is to see how we are changing ourselves and the world one voice at a time and one song at a time.

– Karen Stein, choir director