Butuan Diocese holds online concert to raise funds for COVID-19 relief

FOR A CAUSE. 2019 Idol Philippines 3rd place winner and 2017 Michael Bolton’s Bolt of Talent champion Lance Busa sings inside the Saint Joseph Cathedral in Butuan City for the online concert to raise funds for families affected by COVID-19 quarantine measures. ERWIN MASCARIÑAS

BUTUAN CITY –– The Catholic Diocese here, together with the Father Saturnino Urios University (FSUU) and the city government, has launched a fundraising drive to aid families badly hit by quarantine measures due to the coronavirus disease (COVID-19).

The fundraising drive kicked off Friday, May 1, through a three-hour online concert starting at 1 p.m., carried via Youtube Livestream and Facebook Live in the accounts of FSUU, the Butuan diocese, and the city’s public information office.

Dubbed Beyond Physical Distance: A Butuanon Fund Drive for COVID-19 Relief Operations, the concert featured homegrown artists like Voice of the Philippines Season 2 winner Jason Dy, Tawag ng Tanghalan champion Elaine Duran, 2019 Idol Philippines third placer Lance Busa, The Voice Kids contender Hannah, Jay Roy Asedilla, and US-based band JAGMAC.

“Other than providing spiritual nourishment via online Holy Mass celebrations, we believe that it should also be supplemented with the physical nourishment when people have not been generating enough income to survive,” Fr. Chito G. Butardo, FSUU vice president, said.

“We believe that it is also the moral responsibility of the church to respond to such situations,” Butardo added.

In almost two hours, the fund drive gathered more than P750,000 in donations.

“The target beneficiary of the concert will be the poorest of the poor, who may have been left out in the different listings that were made as a reference in the distribution of relief goods,” said Butardo.

Butardo explained that during the quarantine period, social media has become the platform and the venue where people gravitate.

“It is in this light that we thought of coming up with an event such as this concert using the same platform to evoke some sense of concern from the citizenry by asking them to help raise funds for the relief operations in Butuan,” he said.

Cash donations may be deposited through the FSUU Foundation Inc.’s bank accounts: Bank of the Philippine Islands (BPI) account number 2221-0113-79; RCBC account number 759-05116-76.

Donors may also contact the foundation at these numbers: 09999967066, 09177056597, or 342-1830 (local 501).