Listen to Your Heart: a concert with a purpose

For the past seven years, PHS’s UNICEF Club has collaborated with the PHS and PMS orchestral programs to perform a benefit concert. The goal of the event, which took place on October 17th, was to help raise funds for UNICEF and call attention to the organization’s mission.

UNICEF, which stands for United Nation Children’s Fund, is a global organization that works to protect the rights of children, as well as to provide underprivileged children with opportunities and improved quality of life. Originally founded in 1946 to provide relief to women and children after World War II, UNICEF has since expanded to aid children everywhere.

“The UNICEF motto is ‘For every child,” said Kajol Karra ’26, UNICEF Club co-leader. “So a lot of the money that we raise or the drives that we do go towards women and children in underserved communities.”

In addition, the UNICEF Club throughout the year, such as bake sales and clothing drives, the $1,800 from the concert went towards helping to support this mission.

“They’re able to direct those funds in certain ways for natural disasters, for education, for certain current crises that are happening in the world,” said Robert Loughran, director of the PHS Orchestral Program and UNICEF Club advisor.

“We [aimed] to artistically present the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals to our audience,” Loughran added. The UNICEF Club leaders presented the seventeen goals, which the U.N. website describes as an “urgent call for action by all countries,” by giving short but informative descriptions of each. These objectives include no poverty, high quality education for all, and climate action, to foster a more sustainable and peaceful world. As each goal was described, the combined orchestras played music that was in accordance with the goal’s intentions. The pieces performed include “The Sheltering Sky” by Ryuichi Sakamoto and “The Enchanted Garden” by Maurice Ravel, among many others. These full ensemble songs were interspersed with piano solos as well.

This concert was a large undertaking, involving preparation from both organizations since early September. All of the orchestras, which include 34 PHS Orchestra members, 48 Sinfonia & Repertoire Orchestra members, and 68 artists from PMS, had been working on their pieces for the concert since school started, beginning rehearsals in the first and second weeks of September. The UNICEF Club, too, prepared extensively.

“We get the help of everyone in the club with the bake sale and selling the tickets, giving people their brochures and everything. And so they’ll help us in that sense while we prepare and give the speeches onstage,” said UNICEF co-leader Anais Betancourt ’26.

This isn’t the only collaboration that the UNICEF Club and the PHS Orchestra have done. In addition to the past seven years of annual benefit concerts, in 2024 the PHS Orchestra went on a tour through Europe, in which the orchestra also worked to highlight UNICEF’s work and mission.

The UNICEF benefit concert is the largest of the UNICEF club’s fundraising events every year, and the funds raised from it make a large difference in the lives of many underprivileged children who rely on aid from UNICEF. Betancourt hopes that the message of the concert will stick out to people and create more involvement in UNICEF in the Princeton community