Over the summer, when most students might be focused on creating vacation memories, Point Loma Commercial Music and Communications major, Bella Stine was busy making music and social impact at the same time. During the first week of August, she flew to New York City to co-launch a new pop song, “We All Stand Together,” that is raising awareness and funds for the more than 50 million forcibly displaced children around the world.
During her week in the Big Apple, Bella, a native of Bakersfield, CA, met for the first time co-recording artist Lea Jade García a native of the Rio Grande Valley in Texas. Together, with the producers of the global campaign, they performed the song at “pop up” appearances at the Statue of Liberty, Little Island, and Times Square in front of their billboard.
The week culminated with the song launch at Hit Factory Records Studio (now Fount Studios) where Michael Jackson, Mariah Carey, Stevie Wonder, Bruce Springsteen, Madonna, Billy Joel, Whitney Houston, and other stars recorded their music. Bella and Lea followed the song launch with a performance at Copacabana, one of NYC’s most historic nightclubs.
How did she end up launching a new song? She was trained by Michael Orland, former music director of American Idol, and he recommended her to his friend, award-winning filmmaker Jeff Oppenheim. Orland composed the song, and Oppenheim needed a vocalist to sing it for the recording.
Oppenheim is a founding partner of Channel4Cause (C4C), a New York City-based social benefit company. He and partner Alibe Hamacher, a Chile native and expert in global causes, asked Orland’s help to produce a song that would raise awareness of the growing humanitarian crisis of the more than 50 million forcibly displaced children around the world. Their number is growing, while funding is declining.
Orland had composed the song long before with two of his award-winning colleagues – Julia Winger Quay who co-wrote the music and Brian Seth Hurst who penned the lyrics. And bingo! In this campaign, the song was born.
We All Stand Together was recorded at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley (UTRGV) thanks to the Mission, Texas Rotary Club’s recommendation. The C4C team worked with university faculty to arrange the filming of the song as performed by UTRGV’s 100-strong chorus. Oppenheim advised UTRGV film department students who filmed the entire process.
The campaign includes the song, a forthcoming music video, and a feature-length documentary, “The Resilience of Innocence: The Making of the Stand Together Project.” The documentary, which features Bella in her role as singer and Global Youth Ambassador, is being entered in film festivals in the U.S. and abroad. The song’s message: “If we all stand together, not a break in the human chain, if we all stand together, we all stand to gain.”
Hamacher, a native of Chile, noted that, “Displaced children can spend up to twenty years in refugee camps.” They struggle to find a balance between their new environments and their home countries. “Once settled in new homes, they encounter enormous cultural barriers, from language to religious rituals to diet, leaving them to feel like outsiders,” she added.
The song can be purchased for $10 by visiting stand4childrensong.com. Proceeds go to Austin-based nonprofit Global Impact Initiative (Gii) which helps refugees around the globe.
“Stand Together’s message is to make us all understand – especially kids my age – that any of us are vulnerable to being on the move,” Bella said. “Music is universal, so it is perhaps the best way to build awareness. By lifting my voice as a singer, I am also standing together with the displaced young people of the world.”