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As Christmas approaches, we watch with horror the continuing violence taking place in Gaza and the West Bank. Therefore when we received a request for help from the West Bank, we immediately said yes.
We returned from our visit to Northern Iraq (Kurdistan), where we spoke at a conference about de-radicalisation, visited the Lalish Yezidi pilgrimage, and then facilitated a multi-day training for medical students.
We have just returned from our training visit to Northern Iraq and Northeast Syria. What an impressive journey, we have a lot to tell you!
At the beginning of March, Sounds of Change trainers Sander van Goor and Lucas Dols went to Northeast Syria to train employees of six local partner organisations. The NGO 'Norwegian People's Aid' (NPA) asked us to contribute to their project 'Art for De-radicalisation'.
First of all, our hearts go out to everyone suffering from the consequences of the terrible and destructive earthquake in Syria and Turkey and the ongoing war in Ukraine.
We have previously worked in the current epicenter of the earthquake, Gaziantep - Turkey. And next month we will leave for a music training in Syria, close to the earthquake zone.
Documentary maker Joris Postema has made a short film about our Sounds of Change Academy in the Netherlands. Joris and his team followed us during 2021 and 2022 to capture the training of eight Musical Changemakers, including their delivery of six weekly music workshops for the children of four different asylum centres in the Netherlands.
In the film you can also see Sounds of Change trainers Lucas Dols and Hashem Kabreet talking about the power of music and where the idea of starting an academy came from.
Our five-year anniversary celebration was beautiful and touching!
We would like to share a few of these moments with you, as well the exciting news that we have been featured in a podcast by De Correspondent, when Lex Bohlmeijer interviewed Sounds of Change founder and director Lucas Dols.
In Beirut we worked with the team at War Child Lebanon. We facilitated five days of training with a beautiful, diverse group of War Child staff members who are working in different departments of Psycho Social Support (PSS), Education, Child Protection, Case Management, Research & Inclusion.
In 2016 and 2017 we were invited to give masterclasses at Kiev University. The university was interested in the power of music and the possibilities of applying music in work with (traumatized) children and young people. As part of the masterclass, we took the students to an orphanage, where the students could practice and implement what they had learned with children. These children were victims of the armed conflict that has raged since 2014 between pro-Russian separatists and the Ukrainian army.
The COVID-19 pandemic has forced us to temporarily stop our physical training sessions in the Middle East and we have missed this work a great deal. But we are looking forward to continuing as soon as possible and see the progress of our trainees who work with children and young people in Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, the Westbank and Northern Iraq/Kurdistan.