OTTAWA – As a thank-you message to Canada, a group of Syrian refugee kids’ choir performed last Thursday at the House of Commons, sending a message of peace back to Syria.

“Canada’s beautiful and the people here [are] very nice to us,” Chorister Aaya Mahmoud told CBC on Saturday, December 10.

“I feel happy because I’m with my friends here and I’m singing.”

CultureLink’s Nai Syrian Children’s Choir performed a midday show on Parliament Hill on Thursday, as a thank you to the country that has given them a second chance.

According to kids, they wanted their message of peace to be heard back in Syria and worldwide.

Esmaeel Abofakher and Rahaf Alakbani, married musicians who arrived recently as refugees from Syria, supported the choir and performed with them.

Abofakher also wrote one of the three songs the choir is set to perform.

“We are singing for peace everywhere — every place in the world — and I feel that it’s a very good point to thank Canada for what they did [for] us,” he told CBC News on Wednesday, while en route to Ottawa.

The choir was founded by Fei Tang, a project consultant for the Toronto settlement agency CultureLink, who also enlisted local music educators to help.

According to Tang, music gives the young participants confidence, helps them learn English and allows them to express difficult emotions, according to Tang.

“Some of them are very aware what’s happening [in Syria] and we have quite a few families… from Aleppo. They have cousins, they have family members still there, so it’s very sad,” she explained.

“They don’t worry about a lot of things when they are singing.”

The 26-member choir was most excited about singing in Ottawa and seeing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

“I’m so glad to be here. Me and my wife, we feel that we have to [be] giving back to our community now,” Abofakher said.

“They give us a second chance at life here in Canada.”