Although she’s only 15, Hamilton High School sophomore Taylor Jones has already had a cancer scare.

“In 2010, I spent a week in Children’s Hospital,” she said. “They were unsure what was wrong with my leg and started throwing the word cancer around.”

It turned out to be a bone infection that is now healed, but Jones said the experience was “eye-opening.”

A little while later, while she was standing in line for a meet-and-greet with Australian singer Cody Simpson in an area mall, she overheard a young woman behind her reading a letter she wrote to Simpson about a young cousin who had died of brain cancer.

“I got choked up listening to what she was talking about,” Jones said, and struck up a conversation and a friendship with Molli Schuler, now 20, a nurse who lives in Lebanon.

For Christmas 2011, Jones helped Schuler organize a toy drive for patients in the pediatric cancer ward at Children’s Hospital. It was through that experience that they began to plan a fundraising event.

Those plans come to fruition this weekend with Jones and Schuler’s “Songs of Hope” concert at the Underground in Forest Park.

“The hardest part was just finding a venue that didn’t want to charge us $2,000 for one night or take all of the profits,” Jones said. “But you just have to tell yourself that if you really want to do it, then do it.”

Finding performers proved to be a little easier, they said. All they had to do was ask.

After seeing Eben Franckewitz perform at the Underground, the duo asked him to perform at their fundraiser.

“I had seen him on ‘American Idol’,” Jones said.

Franckewitz holds the distinction of being the youngest performer, at 15, to make it to the show’s Top 24.

“The reason we wanted him,” Jones said, “is because he’s so young.”

“Almost every act we asked was really excited and willing to help,” Schuler said.

Some of the acts are going to donate a portion of their merchandise proceeds to the cause, she said.

Shuler said she wants to help Children’s Hospital and pediatric cancer research in the memory of her nephew, Clayton French, who was 6 years old when he died of cancer. She is also working toward getting her LPN credentials in the hope of working on the pediatric cancer ward there.

“He was diagnosed when he was 5 with brain cancer, but he always kept a smile on his face and was really special to me,” she said. “They lived in Montana and had to go to Utah for treatments which made it very expensive, on top of all the medical bills they had to deal with.

“Children’s Hospital is very highly rated in their pediatric cancer,” she said, “and I’ve always wondered what might have happened if he could have gone there instead.”

During the concert, Schuler and Jones will sing the Taylor Swift song “Ronan,” which is about a young cancer patient.

“The song is pretty close to what happened with my cousin,” Schuler said.