Voices of Hope

“When Words Fail, Music Speaks”

Eastview High School was proud to present Voices of Hope Sing-a-thon on Friday, February 20th 2009, to benefit the Angel Foundation. This foundation helps to improve the quality of life throughout the cancer experience by providing financial assistance, education, and support to cancer patients and their families. All proceeds from this event will help to support families in possibly paying their rent, mortgage, grocery bills, for gas, and all payments that affect the care and treatment their family member who has been diagnosed with cancer.

The Sing-a-thon originated out of Eastview High School and will be directed by Judy Sagen. With a class of 54, Judy Sagen asked the students how many people knew someone first hand with cancer and to her surprise fifty four hands went up. One student in the class however is different. Hannah Skalback recently found out her mother was suffering from pancreatic cancer, and the doctors had estimated she had about three to six months to live. This event started off with the singing of the National Anthem sung by Brooke Kilgarriff, who also introduced many of the acts while showing off her Miss Twin Cities sash and crown. Throughout the day the 640 seat performing arts center was full with people entering in and out, while non-stop performers take the stage. Ending the sing-a-thon was a local band Ferris. Ferris are made of all Eastview High School alumni, and they were all thrilled to be a part of this wonderful cause.

I talked to an Eastview High School sophomore named Emma Webster who not only attended Voices of Hope, but was a participant in the great cause as well. “I felt proud to be able to use my voice to create hope for everyone who is touched or affected in any way by cancer.” She stated, “For our first year we did extremely well. We raised over 20,000 dollars and we handled the stress of the whole thing with class and just enjoyed the entire night.” Emma was very proud to have helped put the whole thing together as well. She personally has many people in her family who have had cancer, and is affected by the disease a lot. ““My Uncle currently has prostate and bone cancer and my grandpa had prostate cancer as well. My grandma had melanoma cancer and Hannah Skalbeck from women’s chorale has a mom suffering from pancreatic cancer with a prognosis of six months to live.” When asked what her favorite part of the night was, Emma replied, “I just loved seeing people get up on stage and not caring if they were good or bad, they just got up there for the cause. My favorite performance was Joel Jacobson because he put his heart and soul into his performance and didn’t care what people thought of him. But closing out the night was the band Ferris and it was so much fun when a bunch of us girls got right up in front of the stage and just danced and had a lot of fun.”