In 1978 Human Rights Worker Ray Barnett arrived in Uganda to research a book about the brutal years of dictatorship and terror that had devastated this beautiful country. What he found would change his life.
Uganda was a country in ruins. Villages had been razed to the ground and adults herded into torture chambers or murdered on the spot. Orphaned children spent their days hunting for food and water in the bush, or begging and scavenging for it on the city streets.
Ray knew he had to do something to help. For the next six years he raised money and set up small relief projects run by local people. Then in 1984 he heard a BBC news report that told of 150,000 children starving to death in northern Uganda. Once again he boarded a plane to see for himself what was happening. And so began the journey that would start the formation of the African Children’s Choir.
"While we were in Uganda we gave a ride to another town to a very small boy and he sang all the way in the vehicle", explains Ray: When I got back to Canada and people were not very interested in Uganda, I remembered this small boy. I thought, ’If we could take a group of these beautiful children to the West, it would surely raise money to help their country”
The first African Children’s Choir™ arrived in Vancouver, BC in the fall of 1984 and immediately stole the hearts of everyone they met. The Choir successfully communicated the desperate situation of the children back home and by the end of the year, they had raised enough money to open the Makerere Children’s Home in Uganda. The Choir returned home, where the funds raised from the tour also enabled them to continue their education and ensured that they were well cared for.
Ray originally envisioned the Choir tour as a one-time endeavor. But the Choir’s instant popularity, combined with the ongoing needs of children in Africa, convinced him to do it again. Soon another 30 children were selected for a new Choir, and another year of traveling and performances began. |
