September – Sophie Heath
October – Brock Houghton
November – Amelia Gabor
December – Janie Kempf
January – Riley Lloyd
February – Connor Carroll
March – Cody Dennis
April – Project Café and the organization’s student board members of Madison Gabor, Sophie Heath, Patrick Karmis, Hannah Light-Olsen, Maureen Milmoe and Ryan Seeley.
May – Schyler Rochelle
June – Sydney Schnabl
The Cazenovia Lions Club last week honored its 10 students of the month for the 2013-14 school year at its 12th annual end of the year dinner at Cazenovia College, which featured a presentation by world-renowned musician Samite Mulondo, founder of Musicians for World Harmony.
“We congratulate, honor and are very proud of our students of the month,” said Lions Club Member Tom Long, who coordinates the student of the month program.
The banquet is held annually to honor Cazenovia High School students who have been selected as Students of the Month throughout the school year for their high achievements in community and/or school service. Students are dinner guests of the Lions Club and parents and friends are invited.
After dinner and congratulatory remarks by Lions Club President Nick Kagey, banquet attendees heard about the healing and uplifting power of music and how the organization Musicians for World Harmony uses that power to help heal the damaged spirits of orphans, AIDS victims and former child soldiers in Africa.
Guest speaker Samite Mulondo, who was born and raised in Uganda and now lives in Ithaca, used words, music and documentary clips to show the audience how and why music can make a difference in the lives of people.
Mulondo, who was raised in privilege but eventually ended up in refugee camps in Africa, said his experiences taught him that people are all the same. “We all want food, laughter, love. We all want the same things. We are all the same – we just need to care about one another.”
Mulondo offers his audiences what one article described as “smooth vocals accompanied by the kalimba, marimba, litungu, and various flutes.” He has played music around the world with musicians such as Peter Gabriel, Pete Seeger and Paul Simon. He has performed for the Dalai Lama and at the Nobel Peace Prize awards ceremony.
But it was when he traveled to Liberia as part of a 1998 PBS documentary “Song of the Refugee,” and saw the effect his music had on refugee camp inhabitants, many of whom who he said had not smiled in years, that he realized, “with music, people become hopeful.”
After that experience, Mulondo created Musicians for World Harmony. “I’ve seen where music has broken boundaries, and where I can make a difference with my talents I received from my grandfather,” he said.
In addition to spreading music and hope to the people of war-torn Africa, Mulondo said his organization is now expanding to put increased focus on music education and visiting nursing homes and hospitals.
In addition to being the focus of the documentary “Song of the refugee,” Mulondo also participated in the upcoming documentary “Alive Inside,” which is a salute to Nassau County, N.Y.-based social worker Dan Cohen and his nonprofit Music and Memory organization, which advocates for the use of iPods in treating senior citizens who suffer from dementia. The documentary recently won an award at the Sundance Film Festival and will be available for general audiences soon.
More information about Musicians for World Harmony can be found on its website at musiciansforworldharmony.org. More information Samite Mulongo can be found on his Facebook page, facebook.com/pages/Samite/52303345802.
For more information on the Student of the Month program, contact Tom Long at 655-9679.
Jason Emerson is editor of the Cazenovia Republican. He can be reached at [email protected].
