Students in instructor Jo-Ann Sickles' small group communication class were given an assignment that asked them to come up with a project fully their own that would benefit a community.

Students Shelby Farrens, Tayla Hodges, Patrick Lafferty, Carson Matthew, Steven Tasoff and Christine Thoma organized the "Concert for a Cure" at the Lake Stevens Cavalry Chapel to raise awareness and money for curing cancer.

Hodges is a semi-professional singer who released an album called "Footprints" in 2007. Hodges and four other bands performed in the Cavalry Chapel in front of about 200 people.

According to Hodges, Thoma was interested in benefiting cancer since her daughter, classmate Shelby Farrens, had been through and recovered from cancer herself.

"Everyone knew what they were passionate about and we took our passions and combined them together," Hodges said. "Everyone just shared that passion for fighting cancer and loving music."

A variety of cancer booths were contacted and appeared as well including a breast cancer walk booth and the American Cancer Society.

Everyone in the group worked together to advertise the concert. From creating the event on Facebook and sending invites, passing out flyers and even placing an ad in The Herald.

"We didn't get as many people to come as we wanted," Hodges said. "We still had a fair amount of people come, but we were anticipating a lot more." Hodges added, "the Chapel seats 800 so if we could've gotten that that would have been ideal . the more people you reach the better you know."

Most all of the students from the class came to show their support including Sickles. While the group managed to raise $68.00 during Concert for the Cure, with the little time there was available to organize the concert the group prioritized raising cancer awareness rather than money.

"We only had so much time to plan the event because (the class) is only for one quarter," Hodges said. "A concert is something that could take up to a year to plan and we only had three months."

"The Concert for the Cure was a lot of fun, but it looked like a lot of work," Tonder Lystad said. "The week before it happened you would go to the library and you would see that group there for hours at a time."

The group got an A on their assignment, but there were other groups that organized quality projects as well that included Wii Bowling at the Washington Oaks Retirement Home, taking international students on a trip to Seattle and a video on internet safety.

Lystad contributed to organizing the Wii Bowling at the retirement home, which put on a Wii Bowling tournament for the seniors and passed out medals and trophies to the top performers.

Medals were given to the first, second and third place finishers, while trophies were handed out for the most strikes and tea bags were given as consolation prizes.

"We wanted to give medals to everybody, but the place where we got them didn't have enough medals," Lystad said. "So we ended out giving tea bags as the consolation prize."

"It was cool cause apparently the people who won the medals wore them around for the next week," Lystad said.

Sickles said her class really strives to teach the importance of working as a team and building relationships with people.

"We were all working together for a common purpose . you don't usually go through so many conflicts in other classes," Hodges said. "It made us all have a better relationship with each other than you would have with your normal classmates."