Fund-raisers feature heavily in the days ahead as various entertainment events are held to benefit worthy causes.

Harvard University's Hasty Pudding Theatricals (HPT) will be raising funds for The Bermuda Diabetes Association and PALS during its 40th annual Bermuda production, `It's a Wonderful Afterlife', which opens at City Hall tonight.. Written by undergraduates Will Aronson and Ben St. Clair, HPT's 155th production invites the audience to choose its "ideal post mortem vacation destination". The show is described as "a no-holds-barred drag burlesque, with men playing both male and female parts". As always it will have its trademark collection of excruciating puns as well as the famous, all-male kick line that has ended every production for 100 years. In addition, there will be a Bermuda reference in the dialogue. Words and music have been written and composed by the Harvard students themselves, while production assistance was provided by a battery of professionals, including the director, choreographer, set, costume and sound designers, technical and music directors, among others.

Performances of `It's a Wonderful Afterlife' continue through March 29, all starting at 8 p.m. Tickets are available on line at 222.hastypudding.org and also from the box office ( 295-1727.

Meanwhile, on the steps of City Hall the Mayor of Hamilton will declare today "Hasty Pudding Day" at 12 noon in honour of HPT's 40th Bermuda production.

On Saturday, March 29 Bojo Productions will present an evening of folk and jazz music featuring special guest vocalist Gerald Yazoo as well as various musicians and singers, including the Nick Swan Jazz Quartet. The event, to be held at the Rhythm Lab in the St. George's community complex on Old Military Road, St. George's, will include a vegan buffet dinner and begin at 7 p.m. Tickets ($25) are available at the Music Box or by calling 297-2874/297-8422. Proceeds will go towards the Rhythm Lab's overseas students scholarship fund.

Adlev Entertainment Productions is presenting `A Little Music for Tonya' at the Fairmont Hamilton Princess on Sunday, April 6. The show, featuring many of Bermuda's best entertainers including Gene Steede, Tony Bari, Legacy, Sheila Smith, Dean Ming, June and Phiemma Caisey, James Richardson, Aaron Daniels and the Griffin Jazz Quintet, will get underway at 4 p.m. There will also be raffles and a Chinese auction. Tickets ($30) are available at 27th Century Boutique and the Music box. All proceeds will go towards the many medical expenses of 18-year-old Tonya Symonds, daughter of popular DJ and jazz show host `CJ' (Cousin Juicy) Symonds and his wife Georgia. Tonya is currently undergoing extensive treatment for fibrolyalgia in the University of California at Los Angeles Medical Centre, and her condition, first diagnosed when she was 12, is a complex one which includes chronic pain. Although teenager has been in a wheelchair for some years, intensive treatment by a group of doctors and physiotherapists is helping her to function more independently and manage her pain better, but the financial burden on her family is very heavy.

Tonya was a top student at Berkeley Institute where she gained an A in GCE English before her illness forced her to leave. With the assistance of tutors, she then went on to gain her BSSC, and was also a winner of the Tom Petit Essay Contest. Despite her uphill struggle, Tonya remains motivated and determined to walk again, and is steadily improving.

The world premi?re of the documentary, `School of Hope', by Canadian producer/director James Howard on April 11 during the Bermuda International Film Festival (BIFF) will also coincide with a fund-raiser for the School of Hope Education Fund - an institution in Beijing, China which aims to change the lives of poor, rural Chinese girls through a three-month-long vocational programme at Beijing's Rural Women Knowing All Vocational Training School. There, they are taught self-esteem and marketable skills.

The girls, who must demonstrate their desire to learn and improve themselves, are chosen by school recruiters. At the school they concentrate on learning a skill, such as hairdressing, seamstressing, basic bookkeeping or computer data entry. They also take courses in civics, health, sex education and self-development. As of January this year the School of Hope Education Fund has raised over $70,000, which has funded eight full programmes for 163 girls from all over China. A gift of as little as US$375 can support a rural girl for a full three months' training at the School.

The documentary, which tracks a semester in the lives of four extraordinary young women who leave their remote mountain homes to attend the school in Beijing, and exposes the emotional core of the universal struggle of young women to achieve more than what life proffers, regardless of background, has filmed entirely by Mr. Howard, a graduate in Economics and Film Studies at Queen's University in Ontario. An experienced film maker, he is currently beginning a Master's degree in Environmental Studies at York University in Canada, where he plans another documentary for his thesis. Through documenting important issues on film and tape, as well as working directly with people around the world, Mr. Howard's aim is to make a meaningful contribution to helping the world.

The April 11 screening of `School of Hope' will be linked to a dinner at the Bermuda National Gallery, beginning at 9 p.m., for which tickets are $75. For tickets/further information contact Susan Howard at showardbbsr.edu, or (297-1880 ext. 246). Ms Howard, science liaison and operations manager at the Bermuda Biological Station for Research, is also the sister of the film's producer/director, James Howard.

`School of Hope' will also be screened at 6 p.m. on April 14 at Southside Theatre. Tickets are $10 and there will be a cash bar.

Details of other fund raisers for the Rural Women Knowing All Education Fund are expected to be announced in due course.

Poet Denise DeMoura will give a presentation, including her rough-cut video, at the Bermuda National Gallery today from 12.30 p.m. to 1.30 p.m. Admission is free.