By Shivani Burra
Staff Writer
@shiviburra
Saturday night the Coppell High School commons was alive with the sound of music. Local musicians played in order to raise money for the Brent Woodall Foundation, which is dedicated to empowering families of children with autism and developmental disabilities.
Juniors Mallorie Munoz, Ali Gentry and freshman Riya Mahesh put together the benefit concert for the Advanced Placement (AP) English classes humanitarian aid project.
“My teacher does 20 time, so you basically get to do whatever you want,” Gentry said. “ So I decided to do a fundraiser. And then I found out that every other advanced placement english class was also doing fundraisers so I paired with someone who was doing a humanitarian aid from another class.”
20-Time is an educational conceptual to teach students to create their own questions, do their own research, and form their own conclusions with their learning. Why?
Gentry’s brother has autism and was the inspiration for the benefit concert.
“My brother has Autism, so I wanted to do something to make a difference for people with autism,” Gentry said. “I really like music and my friend is in Flood the Walls so I thought a good way to raise music would be through a concert.”
The foundation’s focus is to raise autism awareness and to further provide education, training and financial support to families with children that have autism.
Gentry told her advisor Mrs. Henson that she wanted to help people with autism and paired up with some other students also interested in raising money for autism to plan the concert together.
Local bands such as Flood the Walls, Around the Sun and Auto performed Saturday night. Selected choir students, juniors Natalie Lopez and Maha Haque, also brought their passion and voice to the concert.
“Ali asked me a couple weeks ago to sing at her event and I immediately said yes because this is an amazing cause to fund,” Haque said. “Autism is an amazing cause to raise money for and there is not a lot going on in the school currently to work towards that and I think Ali is doing a really great job.”
Lopez contributed to the event in order to support a good friend and a good cause.
“Ali talked to me when she first came up with the idea, back in October,” Lopez “I told her I would be willing and just to let me know. When she was working to put all of this together she asked me to sing and I said of course because she is one of my good friends, and I also wanted to help support raising money for autism. I really wanted to do this because I think it is a great thing to be apart of sharing music and being able to perform other great people that wanted to support the same cause.“
The goal for fundraising was 700 dollars; however the group surpassed their goal and raised about 1,300 dollars.
“I am all for helping people through the power of music,” Haque said. “I thought this was a really great way to incorporate something that everybody loves and cause that really needs to be fought for.”
