African musical traditions blended with familiar hymns fill the sanctuaries of two area churches this month. The African Children’s Choir is making a few stops in the Texas Panhandle as part of their tour across the nation, and HPPR’s Nicole Crawford spoke with choir manager Tina Sipp about the upcoming performances and the organization's mission to help fund education for kids in some of the world’s most impoverished nations. To hear the full interview, click the link at the top of the page.
“The African Children’s Choir is a faith-based nonprofit. Essentially, we are raising money to fund education programs in Africa for children who would not otherwise have the opportunity to go to school, because even a government school has costs associated with it such as uniforms, pencils and papers.” Sipp said. “The families that we're working with are usually just working for a day to get the meal for that day, and there's not a lot of extra money for education. It's very difficult to break the cycle of poverty when you can't get an education. We have helped fill the gap with a whole army of people behind us for 41 years to help these children to get an education and really become what they were intended to be.”
Sipp explained how the organization raises money to support their cause. “The major fundraising arm of our organization is our traveling choirs. We bring children, currently from Uganda, and there are somewhere between 17 to 20 children per choir. The children are ages seven to 10, and they do anywhere from a four to nine month tour of the US. We also travel in Canada and the UK, and we perform at local churches. Those churches provide host families for us, meals for us, and the money that we raise through love offerings at the concerts then goes back to Africa to help support hundreds of children. Not only do the children you see on the stage benefit from this, but hundreds of their friends back home in our educational programs do as well. These children don’t know a lick of English before they come to us; however, in six-months’ time they learn the program, they're doing schooling in English, and they're communicative. I don't think we can use the term profound for a lot of things anymore, but this is a profound change of trajectory for hundreds of lives every year. I think that's pretty remarkable when you get to do or be part of something that makes a profound difference in someone else's life.”
Sipp also talked about the program the choir is performing on their ongoing tour. “The current program that we are performing is called ‘Just As I Am’. There's an incredible Ugandan artist who has put arrangements together of familiar, favorite hymns. ‘Just As I Am’ is one of the hymns that we sing, but we will perform other familiar hymns set to African rhythms overlaid with lyrics in Ugandan and I think in two or three different African languages. They do praise numbers in their native language, plus there's African drumming, and, of course, the traditional dances. We also have three different sets of costumes that the children perform in. It's like having Africa at your doorstep, and yet, there are enough English songs that people would probably recognize, or at least be able to tap their foot to.”
The African Children's Choir performs in Dimmit at the First Methodist Church on December 19 at 6:00 pm Central, and in Amarillo at Polk Street United Methodist Church on Sunday, December 21 at 7:00 pm Central. More information on the African Children's Choir, as well as recordings and interviews with the performers, can be found at their website and on their YouTube channel.
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