DUBAI // A group of Filipinos is organising a benefit concert this week to aid cancer patients in Dubai.
The concert, titled "Let Pain be my Strength", will also be a tribute to the father of one organiser, who died of gastric cancer this month in the Philippines.
The organisers, Training and Opportunities for Pinoys Abroad (Tropa), began planning the event last month to raise funds for the treatment of two of its members and other Filipinos affected by the disease.
The audience will be treated to original songs and covers from the 1970s and 1980s by Harris "Dio" Smith and a support band.
Fretsyl Ching Egnora, the vice president of Tropa, said the concert would fulfil "a promise made by a daughter to her ailing father to spread awareness and messages of hope and strength through songs for cancer patients and their families".
Ms Egnora's father Leo Elizalde, 60, died on July 9 at the National Kidney Institute in Quezon City after suffering gastric cancer for seven months.
Her songs will be performed on the night.
Ms Egnora has suffered cancer and her grandfather died of bone cancer in 2003. Her uncle died of leukaemia in May last year.
One of the beneficiaries of the concert will be Lorelie Silades, 36, who was diagnosed last November with stage-three breast cancer, which means the cancer has not yet spread to other parts of the body.
The concert will be at the Player's Lounge of the Country Club Hotel in Bur Dubai at 9.30pm on Friday. For more information, contact the organisers on (055) 221 7618 or (050) 437 7593, or e-mail poet3ck@yahoo.com.
