Key facts
Area: Wales
Grant recipient: Tenovus
Project: Tenovus Sing With Us Choir for your community
Programme: AdvantAGE
Date of award: January 2011
Amount awarded: £982,637
The choir puts everything they’ve got into singing the Bill Withers’ classic Lean on Me. Looking at them and listening to their voices, you would think that their future was full of hope.
For many, thanks to the weekly singing sessions it still is, but when you discover members have suffered or are battling cancer, the Lean on Me lyrics take on an extra poignancy.
Singing Lean on Me – it’s as if every word and note is a tonic against the dreadful disease which has left some members terminally ill. Like many of us, they had put the horrifying thought of this kind of prognosis to the back of their minds, hoping it would never happen.
But faced with this reality, many members have discovered a new inner strength through singing in the cancer charity Tenovus’ Sing For Life choirs.
“I’ve never looked back,” says soprano Angela Davies. “The choir has given me another purpose to live. I’ve got a family but I’ve also got a Tenovus family. They’re lovely, lovely people who know what it like to lose somebody or are going through it themselves.
“It’s given me something to enjoy again and I’ve started to take a pride in my appearance again. I’ve put on the old Angela again - the old outgoing Angela – not this shell of a person that was just sat at home waiting to die.”
Tenovus cancer charity was among 30 Welsh groups sharing in the Big Lottery Fund’s £20 million AdvantAGE programme aimed at improving the lives of older people. A grant of nearly £1 million will enable Tenovus to establish 15 new Sing for Life choirs for cancer patients over 50 years old, their families, carers, friends and those who have been bereaved through the disease across Wales.