Sara’s choirs raise £850 for WaterAid

Coleg Llandrillo lecturer Sara Brown helped raise more than £850 for WaterAid with a fund-raising choral concert.

Sara is musical director of Bangor Community Choir and Abergele-based choir Coastal Voices.

The two choirs held a joint concert at Rhos-on-Sea United Reformed Church to celebrate 20 years of Coastal Voices, which Sara founded in 2004.

Proceeds from ticket sales, refreshment sales and donations went to WaterAid, which aims to end the global water, sanitation and hygiene crisis. You can donate via the JustGiving page here.

Sara and her choirs have been raising money for WaterAid since 2006, after getting involved in the the charity’s ‘Sing for Water’ project.

In that time they have raised more than £10,000 to help the 771 million people worldwide who do not have clean water close to home, and almost 1.7 billion who do not have a decent toilet of their own.

According to WaterAid, more than 300,000 children under five die every year from diseases caused by poor water and sanitation. That’s more than 800 a day, or one child every two minutes.

Sara said:

“I’m proud that our fundraising efforts are raising vital money for WaterAid and their vision of a world where everyone has access to clean water, decent toilets and good hygiene.

“It’s 2024 – why hasn’t everybody got access to clean, safe water, safe toilets, and soap to wash their hands?”

Sara started Coastal Voices after discovering her passion for singing back in 2000.

She said:

“When I went to my first singing workshop, it was like an Alice in Wonderland moment – I found a door into a world I didn’t know existed. I carried on singing and eventually started teaching singing too.

“We sing unaccompanied harmonies, including songs in Welsh, modern compositions specifically for Acappella, music from Africa, Eastern Europe – including a Ukrainian song – so it’s an eclectic mix, with something for everyone.”

The choirs perform a number of concerts each year, and have raised money for charities including Amnesty International and Bangor Foodbank as well as WaterAid. They are also performing at Bodnant Garden on June 29 and St Tysilio’s Church in Menai Bridge on July 6.

Sara is Programme Leader for Access to Higher Education at Coleg Llandrillo in Rhos-on-Sea. She lectures in Access to HE Humanities and Social Sciences, and Access to HE Healthcare.

She said:

“I’m very lucky, I love my job. Access to Higher Education is a life-changing course that gets people to university, and opens doors to greater job satisfaction and better pay.”