Cross Community Schools Choir Lifts Its Voice in Song to Help Children’s Cancer Charity

A group of cross community young people from various schools across Newry, Mourne and Down District Council have come together to launch an exciting DVD to raise awareness of Cancer Fund for Children’s Daisy Lodge residential support facility outside Newcastle.

Over 100 young people from 18 local schools have been involved in the ‘Children Helping Children’ Choir with rehearsals held on a cross community basis, enabling the establishment of new relationships and cross cultural learning.

This project is supported by the European Union’s PEACE IV Programme, managed by the Special EU Programmes Body (SEUPB). The aim of the ‘Children Helping Children’ project is to build interaction between young people of different backgrounds, to give them a common focus and enable long lasting relationships to be established.

Newry, Mourne and Down District Council Chairman, Councillor Mark Murnin said, “The young people of this district are the leaders of the future; I am delighted that this project has given them the opportunity to make new friends from different schools and different backgrounds and together devleop a shared focus of raising awareness of a very special facility within this area, Daisy Lodge.”

“With the help of local singer/songwriter Mona Owens and others, this project has developed a proactive way of bringing communities of the region together, and we know that the relationships built through this project will live on. Mona’s vision and dedication was instrumental in ensuring that this project got to the point of filming a DVD ready to be launched.”

The young people were provided with the opportunity of attending a recording studio to record the vocals for the DVD and finally, in a culmination of events, the DVD was professionally filmed with the help of a local film company, Slackpress Media.

Match-funding for the project has been provided by the Executive Office in Northern Ireland and the Department of Rural and Community Development in Ireland.