St. Joseph radio show aims to help kids in Ukraine

Dec. 26—While violence continues to erupt in Ukraine, a local radio show wants to give peace to children living there.

Broadcast on St. Joseph Music Foundation Radio, "Sleep Well, Ukraine," streams lullabies and calming music at night in the Eastern European country.

"The whole concept of 'Sleep Well, Ukraine' is to remind people that children are the most vulnerable people in this sort of conflict and unfortunately, this conflict is a worldwide situation that must be addressed," said co-creator Anthony Glise.

The show broadcasts every day at noon in the Central Time Zone, or 8 p.m. in Ukraine, on SJMF's official radio streaming site, http://onlineradiobox.com/us/sjmf, making it available to stream free on any phone or computer. It also is available to listen to locally on the station's FM signal, 99.3, KFOH-LP.

Glise and Michael Fuson, the show's co-creator and head of the St. Joseph Music Foundation, realize that a broadcast from a city in Missouri to Ukraine might seem strange. After looking at the areas the radio station reaches, it's not that unusual, Glise said.

"There are people that listen to this overseas because I think it gives them a look at what we listen to here," Glise said.

Fuson added, "We looked at the places that tune in, the numbers, and we thought the people and number are there to get some traction."

Living and teaching in Europe, Glise said he said he was surprised to hear KFOH getting broadcast at a café in Brussels. The station credits itself as being inspired by European radio stations, playing a mix of all types of genres and specialty shows, as well as local artists.

Having lived in countries during times of unrest, Glise said he knew he wanted to do something more than raise his voice in support of the people of Ukraine.

"Ukraine has become an absolute disaster for kids. So the concept was 'What's something we can do with a radio station?'" he said.

Having kids of his own, Fuson agreed.

"At night, if we have the windows open, we can hear the trains roll through Downtown. I can't imagine if that was gunfire or explosions," he said.

Using Glise's encyclopedic knowledge of classical music, they gathered pieces with a consistently calm tone, with no blaring crescendos or rousing lyrics. Operating a "Sleep Well, Ukraine" Facebook page, they also hope to gather other songs and suggestions from artists.

"The general format is literally lullabies. It's just calm, quiet music that the parents can turn on and let the kids chill," Glise said.

The program starts with a minute of silence to wind down from SJMF's previous program and give the parents a chance to turn it on without loud noises. Glise introduces it in his whisper-quiet voice and the music runs without interruption for 60 minutes. After that, another moment of silence is given to allow parents to turn it off.

While bombings in Ukraine have caused power outages and supply shortages, Glise said there's still a significant amount of people with an internet connection who can listen to it.

"Even with infrastructure damage that's been done by the Russian forces, there's a ballpark of about 80% of Ukraine that still has access," he said.

Since Russia's war on Ukraine has been going on since February, Glise said it can be easy for it to fall back in people's minds. He hopes the radio show also will serve as a reminder that it's continuing and there are humans in the balance.

"The fact that we are geographically so far away from Ukraine is disturbing in the fact that it's easy to forget. But there's enough out there if people are sensitive enough to know what's going on, we hope the program will contribute to that," he said.

Andrew Gaug can be reached at andrew.gaug@newspressnow.com.

Follow him on Twitter: @NPNOWGaug