My
name is Sam Greene and I am currently a student at Wilbraham & Monson
Academy (WMA). This summer my family received a letter from my older brother,
Adam, who was in Edinburgh, Scotland at the time of the G-8 meeting. The
letter described the chaos in Britain as a result of the London terrorist
bombings. My father and I began discussing what ordinary people like us
could do to help the situation. There is a military confrontation in the
Middle East at this time, but as Colin Powell, the former Secretary of
State said, “the war against terror is bound up in the war against
poverty”. This is the same message I heard last year from the former
Prime Minister of England John Major, when he spoke at WMA. It is the
same message Prime Minister Tony Blair referred to in early August of
this year. It is the same message former Presidents Bush Sr. and Clinton
have been sending. Fight poverty, Fight AIDS.
I am fortunate enough to have a personal correspondence with Archbishop
Desmond Tutu, which began while I was attending the Fessenden School.
He encouraged me in my fund-raising effort to send relief funds to the
Cape Town Children’s Welfare Society in South Africa, of which he
is a patron. He feels this was a place where help was truly needed to
improve the lives of children who had been subjected to abuse and poverty
conditions. This was the motivation behind initiating the current project.
Since Hurricane Katrina has created a new burden for our country and left
a wake of tragedy for our friends and fellow citizens, it changes the
goal. Now it is a case of helping our own American family as well as trying
to help our neighbors in Africa. The WMA Real Concert should embrace everyone
as a “Relief Effort Across the Land.”
In this spirit I am organizing a concert of outstanding musicians and
dancers as a fund-raiser. All profits will be divided equally to help
abused children, AIDS victims and victims of poverty in Africa by sending
funds to Desmond Tutu’s Cape Town Children’s Tygerberg Hospital,
as well as to the Katrina Musician's Relief Fund sponsored by Harry Connick,
Jr.
The concert will be held at the Regent Theatre in Arlington, Massachusetts
on June 10th 2006. There will be a limit of 500 tickets for the two hour
show that will include jazz, blues, classical, a cappella and dancing.
This will be an evening of eclectic music, humanitarian effort and no
politics. If you buy or reserve a ticket you will help make new friends,
support your neighbors in need, and stand for a positive force in making
the world a little better.
Please know there will be a grassroots effort to sustain and replicate
this event in the future by encouraging other students to produce their
own concerts across the state and hopefully across the country. It is
our hope we can use this project as a model to generate awareness and
serve as a fundraiser for home relief as well as abroad. Help your own
family and reach out to your neighbor. Help the people of the Gulf coast
and help people in other lands. This is meant to be an American student
effort for humanitarian relief, as well as a chance for students to follow
through in a real-life exercise of entrepreneurial endeavor; the production
of a real concert.
Thank you for your participation as a musician, volunteer, audience member
or patron.
- Sam Greene, Producer,
WMA '06
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