Area students pool efforts to benefit Katrina victims

Ten bands donated their time for the event hosted by a high school group.
By DENISE DICK
VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER
BOARDMAN -- Young people flooded a Southern Park Mall entertainment establishment Saturday for a good cause.
Flood Aid By Boardman Students organized Sing 4 Schools at Jillian's Entertainment to raise money for education of pupils in Louisiana and Mississippi affected by Hurricane Katrina.
Ten local bands, UpNext, Ten Cent Glamour, Johnie 3, Made In Canada, Another Found Self, The Rydells, Ten Count Fall, Rivers Edge, Via Sahara and Zach Rock Band, performed throughout the evening.
"We've had at least 50 to 75 kids come in so far," FABBS organizational adviser Sarah Newland said Saturday afternoon.
By early evening, she was expecting a larger crowd. The event ran through 1 a.m. today.
Each attendee made a $5 donation at the door.
Although most of the early crowd was high school students, parents and families also trickled in and Sarah, also a Boardman High School senior, expected the college crowd to show up later.
"I'm hoping that we raise $5,000 just tonight," she said.
That's on top of the roughly $2,000 garnered through previous fund-raisers.
What got her started
Sarah decided she wanted to help student hurricane victims after learning about their plight by talking to her aunt, who lives in Baton Rouge, La., and her aunt's boyfriend.
"I couldn't imagine being a senior in high school and not knowing where my family and friends are and not being able to graduate from my own school," she said.
Sarah has been in touch with representatives of the Bay St. Louis-Waveland school district in Mississippi and the St. Bernard Parish school district in Louisiana.
"In Bay St. Louis-Waveland, they have five school buildings in the whole district and three of them have to be rebuilt from the ground up," she said.
Students are taking classes in trailers, she added.
St. Bernard Parish, La., suffered some of the worst hurricane damage.
"About 90 percent of the parish was destroyed," Sarah said.
The money to both districts will go into the building and pupil services fund to help buy educational supplies.
Sarah credited her fellow organizers, Jason Ehrenberg and Dan Halleck, both Youngstown State University students, for their work on the event. Ehrenberg, a Boardman graduate, is a school board candidate.
Sarah "came to me with the idea and we brainstormed and that's how we came up with the name FABBS," Ehrenberg said.
Collective effort
Jillian's donated the establishment; all of the bands donated their time. L & amp;E Tent & amp; Party Rentals of Columbiana donated the stage and several businesses contributed food for the bands.
"Not one of the bands hesitated" to participate, Sarah said.
Besides the concert, Saturday's activities featured a raffle of autographed Cleveland Browns and Pittsburgh Steelers memorabilia.
Before Saturday, FABBS, which includes about 60 students, conducted a raffle at last month's Oktoberfest and collected donations from school personnel for flood victims.
Although the concert concludes FABBS' fund-raising activities, the account set up through the school district will remain open, Sarah said.
"We have other groups who do fund-raisers during the school year for charity," she said.
Those groups wanted to contribute but their fund-raisers are later in the year, so members requested that the account remain active so they can add to it later, Sarah said.