From Africa And Beyond Singing Trip

Campaign Story by Nkazi Sinandile director of New Mexico Women's Global Pathways a women, girl/family self sufficiency empowerment program.

Please help the choir raise $2500 to travel to California on July 19 2017. Thank you in anticipation for your generous support.  Funds will cover transportation, food  and accommodation  ( 4 days) for 20 people including three drivers and chaperones. I will be one of the chaperones and drivers.
By the way feel free to mail donations to South African Orion Duet with a memo of Matunda Ya Yesu Choir to P.O.Box 93445, Albuquerque, NM, 87199.   
          Thank you. Story below.

South African Orion Duet, Lungile and Nkazi Sinandile co-founders of the Matunda Ya Yesu Youth Choir and  All Nations African Church in San Bernardino California 15 minutes away from where the choir will sing on July 22 2017. They also founded the Immigrant and Refugee Resource Village of Albuquerque and New Mexico Women's Global Pathways. They also sing with the choir. www.southafricanorionduet.com; www.irrva.com; www.nmwgp.org.
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Some of the African choir members and young people from Middle East creating crafts at the NMWGP center in May this summer in preparation for a craft sale of June 20 ( World Refugee Day. 2017). They will sell during their upcoming concerts to supplement family budgets.
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Background
In  2007  my husband and I by God's help formed a youth choir to help children who arrive in the USA  cope with adjusting to their new life in America.  It is financially sponsored by my husband
through his meager salary.  In addition to his 40 -50 hour job he spends no less than 40 hours not only training and  driving the choir, but serving no less than 400 people including children ( no less than 60 kids a week)  through the choir, IRRVA and NMWGP. He has done that since 2007 and shows no sign of letting upNewest Matunda Ya Yesu Choir members without my husband and I (SAODuet). Help them get to California to pursue the rights of happiness.
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Request: Please help the youth. No amount is too small.
This will be an educational, fund raising and eye-opening trip that will also land them to the ocean for the first time in their young lives.  Every year the trip travels to southern California to raise funds to supplement family budgets as well as to support other at risk children in Albuquerque where they live, for example last year the choir raised funds in Albuquerque to support their coat drive that benefitted Albuquerque's needy youth.    


Lungile alsongside me also directs and pays out of pocket for choir needs, including music system, monitors, micro-phones, percussion instruments and uniforms and teaches the youth to use the choir as an avenue to generate much needed income to help supplement family budgets and occasionally to raise money to help other local at risk children. Through this choir, We hope to sponsor some vulnerable poor children of Africa by setting up a fund in the nearest future to teach the choir members to give back to needy children of South Africa and from refugee camps where the youth choir members come from.

This choir was started by Lungile and myself in 2007 to help newly arriving  youth cope with resettlement issues and to build themselves up while earning some income. Singing, drumming, movement,  helps the children build self esteem, cope with discrimination, overcome isolation, deal with language, educational and social challenges of adapting to their new home.   It also helps them express themselves in English.                                                  
They have been practising hard and performing to raise $2500 to drive to Loma Linda Campus Hill Church California on July 19th  for a  From Africa and Beyond story telling and singing performance entitled Jabulani!  ( Rejoice) on Saturday July 22 at 7 p.m, but two weeks ago they raised less than $600.00 in Farmington and Shiprock. They were really disappointed to find out from the choir director that the choir may not travel to California where they hoped to travel to perform so as to raise funds to supplement family budgets and buy back to school clothes and supplies.   They were told that they might have to do two car washes before travel. Even though they had never washed cars in their lives before they agreed. I felt sorry for them and promised that I am to find places that can allow us to do car wash fund raiser, but then I thought about a gofundme campaign.

They are also to sing at the African American Performing Art Center on July 16, 2017 at 4 pm and will also stage a fashion show of ethnic garments and other crafts that they are creating at New Mexico Women's Global Pathways/IRRVA center. Proceeds from all upcoming  events will supplement family budgets and divided equally among the choir members. Before December the choir will hold a performance to raise funds for the organizations that help them and their families ( Giving back to the organizations that help them). 
These children are some of hundreds of refugee children who have escaped human degradation in squalid refugee camps where they lived and have resettled and found a new life in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Through participation in the choir members find healing, strength and hope and the ability to tell stories of home in their own unique home- stories of hope, love, resilience, unity and fear.  They also learn coping skills and how to tolerate one another.                              


Modelling their creations after one of our sewing training gatherings 4 weeks ago ( never sewn before). They hope to sell these after each performance. 

Rising artisan and  new sound technician for the choir. She became a choir member at 4 years old.
Learning to sew at NMWGP and preparing for a fashion show coming up July 16 locally where 12 girls will model for the first time and sell their crafts after the event.