Profile of Serenata Children’s Choir, Philippines

JEDDAH, Saudi Arabia—Over the past six years, the Seranata
Children’s Choir has been entertaining the Filipino community here
with their upbeat and nostalgic music. The children of Filipino
migrant workers performed their 6th concert this year on Feb. 10 to
a full-house audience at the American International School of
Jeddah.

As in its past concerts, the children got hearty rounds of
applause and occasional standing ovations as they belted out a
repertoire of 11 English and Filipino songs that included the
Tagalog classics “Sitsiritsit” and “Leron Leron Sinta”. This year’s
major concert is titled “Touching Hearts, Touching Lives.”

The title aptly describes what the Serenata has been doing over
the years since its founding by three Filipino expatriates—Sylvia
de los Santos, Desil Manapat and Louis Bautista. The kids, all
children studying at different schools in Jeddah, have been
touching the hearts and lives of people not only with their music
but also with the funds they raise yearly for poor communities back
home.

The beneficiaries of this year’s concert are four college
scholars of the Bantay Bata Edukasyon Project. The past recipients
were the landslide victims in Southern Leyte in 2006, four public
schools in remote areas in Camarines Sur, Bohol, Marawi and
Maguindanao in 2007, a Muslim organization in Cotabato City in 2008
and seven other scholars of Bantay Bata in 2009 and 2010.

Aside from the yearly concert that always falls within the first
three months of the year, the Serenata children also give
invitational concerts.

A month or two before each yearly concert, they also hold a
mini-concert for the runaway Filipina workers taking shelter in a
halfway-home at the Philippine Consulate General in Jeddah.

Serenata was born in 2005 after De los Santos saw a segment of
the ABS-CBN television network’s program “The Correspondents” that
featured “Kayod Kwela”, a semi-documentary about the hardships
undergone by children in remote areas in their quest for
education.