Katie MacColl believes music has the ability to foster social change and increase awareness of important issues.

While recording her last album, MacColl decided that two songs dealing with family violence could better serve a higher purpose.

So she began searching for an organization that might want to use the songs on a fundraising cassette.

Musical contacts directed MacColl to the Sanctuary Foundation, a federally listed charity intent on opening a second stage transition house for battered women and their children in the Lower Mainland. The result is Songs For Sanctuary, a two-song cassette being used as a fundraiser for the Sanctuary Foundation.

"That is another way people can become aware of issues that need to be addressed and cannot be ignored anymore. I am doing this because it needs to be done. If everyone is apathetic, nothing gets done,” she says.

All the proceeds from the $5 two-song cassette Songs For Sanctuary are going to the Sanctuary Foundation, which was formed in Burnaby.

MacColl, a Burnaby resident, was recording songs for her own album when she wondered if they could be used as a fundraiser to assist battered women.

MacColl, project coordinator of Songs For Sanctuary, was attracted to the songs Back Off and Light Burning Low because of their realistic contents.

"I like to sing songs that have a meaning, they are telling a story. It (Back Off) is told in the first person. It’s a very well-written song. It says something. I’m not an ooh baby singer,” she says.

MacColl and two of her former Festive Eddies band-mates have formed a band called Ernie’s Coffee Shop, which plays on Fridays and Saturdays at Carlos ‘n Bud’s Tex-Mex Restaurant in Vancouver.

MacColl has been visiting Lower Mainland malls with Sanctuary Foundation members to sell the cassettes and increase public awareness about the organization. “I don’t know how much we are going to raise on this but the public awareness is just as important,” she says.

Although the songs deal with the issue of family violence, MacColl is pleased that the songs’ messages are not those of retaliation. “What I particularly like about both songs…is they are not about violent retaliation. It’s not someone needing to go seek vengeance. That kind of positive message of breaking the chain of violence is an important one to get across. There is a lot of anger out there.”

MacColl, who is presently studying at Simon Fraser University to become a teacher, is not sure what the world will be like 20 years from now.

"I’m in a situation where I see the respect or lack of it to myself as a teacher, to each other, to the environment. I’m glad we are presenting non-violent message.”