On Thursday July 10th 2008 my mom Suzanne, my little sister Ingrid, my little brother Junior, my little sister Barbro and I (Nancy-Josée) decided to go to see Sean Paul, Akon and Wyclef Jean at a concert here in Toronto. My family is known to do things at the very last minute, however we went to this concert with a purpose in mind and that was to bring awareness about the crisis in the D.R Congo. Every month more than 45 000 people die in the DRC.

It is the deadliest crisis since World War II but still not many people know this. My sister Barbro and I (Nancy-Josée) have just started a new group called “HALISI”. The word “Halisi” is Swahili for positive.Through our performances we wish to convey positive messages of love to the world. We strongly believe that arts can be used to communicate hope, peace and joy to our surrounding society. Hence, Halisi promotes social change and social justice. Our group consists of four girls and we have performed at two festivals called Afro fest and Bana y Africa, a wedding, a conference and we are doing the opening show for the legendary band Kassav. This group has influenced us to continually tell people about the aristocracies in the D.R. Congo and we decided to go to the concert hoping to get one of the artists attention.

Before we left our home we wrote down the following sentence on paper “Every month 45 000 people die in the D.R. Congo, please help us help Congo!”, then we prayed as a family. We prayed specifically about getting one of the artists to see our note and hopefully talk to them about how they can help us help the Congo. At the concert we kept hoping that we would see a miracle and we did…. As Wyclef Jean was singing we waved our note in the air. We can tell that Wyclef has a good heart! He approached us on stage, took the paper, red it, stopped singing, red it to to the crowd and started to freestyle to raise awareness on the Congo! Seriously, I do not think he understands how much this meant to us as a family that is working hard to bring awareness about the situation in our country. Not even to mention what it means to all the suffering people in the Congo!

Wyclef you are amazing and we thank you from the bottom of our hearts for doing this for us! Famous artists like Wyclef Jean have so much power to influence the world. We hope that he can continue to help us bring awareness about the Congo and other countries in need. For all you artists out there reading this, please use your talent, and your power on earth to help people in need!

Click here to watch HALISI performing