Lm520 with love

The students' council at St Albert the Great College, Valletta, recently organised a series of fun activities aimed at raising funds for homeless children and their families in the Philippines.

The students will soon be presenting Lm520 collected to the representatives of the Maltese chapter of the Couples for Christ (CFC), campaign organisers for Gawad Kalinga.

Through this worldwide ambitious project, the CFC is planning to replace 700,000 shanty dwellings with more appropriate accommodation, thus transforming the lives of thousands of poor and homeless people.

The Malta chapter is planning to build 50 of these houses, which will eventually make up what is being called the 'Malta Village'. The money collected by the St Albert the Great students will finance one of these houses with Lm120 to spare.

The fund-raising campaign could not have had a more spectacular launch than a surprise concert by Ira Losco who, unknown to the students, had been invited over to the school.

A brief showing of her Seventh Wonder video clip was followed by a gradual fade-out of the audio as Ira walked on stage singing the song live, much to the students' delight. She then went on to give an outstanding performance by singing a selection of tracks from her latest album, Someone Else.

Throughout the concert, Ira encouraged the students to show solidarity with the families in the Philippines by being as generous as possible.

The fund-raising campaign was brought to an end in an equally fabulous way three weeks later when the recently established percussion band from the Eden Foundation, Eku Tanbur, gave a one-hour concert that enchanted the students, some of whom joined the action on stage. This band was actually set up to create a setting in which people of diverse abilities and disabilities come together to create music through this diversity.

Such a fundraising campaign is a typical example of how justice and solidarity, two of the core values of the recently launched Synod, can be put into practice while at the same time encouraging democratic participation and collegiality at school.