These teens are using their voices to spread awareness.
This past weekend, students from Parkland, Florida’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School performed “Shine” – an empowering original song written in February by drama club just days after a school shooter tragically took 17 innocent lives – in New York City at The Ad Council’s Annual Public Service Award Dinner, which recognizes the industries and individuals who support the Ad Council and its national public service campaigns.
The four students that took the stage to perform are members of Shine MSD, a non-profit organization founded to raise relief funds for victims of the Parkland shooting and their families. And we got a chance to catch up with them at the event to talk about how they’ve turned to music as way to heal from the tragic even that struck their school earlier this year. Junior, Arianna Otero, opened up about the song, “Shine,” saying:
“Through ‘Shine’ and through the organization, it’s definitely given us a family to confide in and find healing through. Also how the song has helped people, it’s also helped our school with showing people that just because this may have happened, we’re going to come back stronger from this and we’re going to come back more unified and more united than ever before.”
In case you missed it, earlier this year 12 students from the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School choir took the stage with Shawn Mendes and Khalid at the Billboard Music Awards.