Three girls are celebrating their longtime friendship and love of music with two benefit concerts to support two charities.

Sisters Sahara and Nafshiya Haylestrom, along with their friend, Sabrina Keyes, will be performing a variety of songs including classical music, opera, contemporary and 1920s-type pieces in the show they call The Three Amigos – Music to the Rhythm of Friendship.

 “Our lives will be drastically changing in the next year,” said Sahara, 17, who will soon be leaving her hometown of Warkworth, Ont., to live on a kibbutz in Israel where she will study Hebrew. “We’ve been friends for a long time, and we wanted to do something together that’s been beneficial to the things that have helped us along our way.”

Sabrina said she was five years old when her family stopped to buy vegetables from the Haylestrom family’s farm. They’ve been friends ever since, despite the Keyes family living in Pickering, an hour and a half west of Warkworth.

The concert, she said, is designed around the dynamics of what has happened throughout their years of friendship.

All three have been singing since they were small children, and they now study classical voice at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto.

Proceeds from the concert will go to two charities: SKETCH, an organization that uses the arts to help Toronto’s homeless and underprivileged youth, and the Bridge Hospice, a Warkworth-based hospice for end-of-life care.

Nafshiya said donating to SKETCH was important to her because art has played a huge role in her own life. “It’s important for us to be able to help other youth or people our age to have that same experience.”

And helping the elderly, especially the terminally ill, plays into their Jewish values. “We all believe in giving quality and letting everybody have a chance to go with dignity,” she said.

The June 8 performance will take place at 7:30 p.m. at the Warkworth Centre for the Arts, and the June 9 show will run at 2:30 p.m. at the Conservatory Theatre in Toronto. For more information and tickets to the shows, visit ittakesavillage.ca.