Students hope song ‘Shine’ helps with healing process
“Shine,” the piano ballad written by Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School students Sawyer Garrity and Andrea Peña after the mass shooting, was released on iTunes on Friday and the proceeds will go toward helping kids heal from the trauma through the arts.
The fund-raising campaign got a boost from several celebrities, including Paul McCartney who retweeted Sawyer and Andrea’s announcement about the song release.
Andrea called the support “So surreal. We never intended any of this to happen.
“We’re singing for those 17 [who died at Stoneman Douglas],” she continued. “To sing to those 17 and sing for all of the victims of any school shooting, that’s what it’s really about for us.”
The girls first shared “Shine” with the public during the CNN-sponsored Town Hall on Feb. 21. They performed live in front of a crowd of 7,000 at the BB&T Center and a few million more who had tuned into the two-hour debate over gun laws in the wake of the school shooting. A reeling community, newly emerging student activists and politicians listened to the song at the end of the sometimes contentious discussion.
The girls now are also planning to perform “Shine” at “The March for Our Lives” in Washington, D.C., on March 24. The march is organized by students at Stoneman Douglas who are demanding gun law reforms.
Sawyer, 16, and Andrea, 15, have set up a nonprofit called #ShineMSD to help students coping with the trauma of the mass shooting by healing through the arts. “Shine” costs $1.29 on
iTunes, and all proceeds from it are slated to go to the nonprofit, according to the songwriters and their parents. They wrote the song as a way to cope with their grief after the shooting and they hope to connect other children with the arts to work through their own emotions too.
Wendy Garrity, Sawyer’s mother, said the nonprofit would like to partner with existing organizations to create arts and mental health programs and explore a variety of mediums for children, including drama, voice, dance, art and writing.
“We just want to be able to bring programs to the community and help further the arts programs that are already here in our school,” she said. “Arts programs in general, the funding has just been depleted year after year. This is something that we can help with.”
Said Sawyer: “It is an honor to share this song with everyone. Music is so cathartic and sharing with others is such an amazing feeling.”
The girls will be joined at the march by celebrities such as Miley Cyrus, Demi Lovato, Jennifer Hudson and Ariana Grande.
On Friday, several other celebrities showed their support of “Shine” across social media. Britney Spears in a tweet said she was “feeling so inspired by #Shine.” In a Facebook post, Andrea Bocelli wrote: “I trust the whole world could listen to the voice of these students, their hopes, the beauty and good of their hearts, and their message. So that the sun can once again shine on their lives and on the world.”
“It’s amazing that other artists that we personally can look up to are now giving their support,” Andrea said. “It means the world.”