We started the new year full of hope, energy and exciting plans for the future.
Here we would like to give you a small insight.
At the invitation of our Sounds of Change Academy alumni Kateryna Kudasheva and her local organisation Sol Diez, we traveled with Trauma International trainers Saskia Bok and Maartje Schel. Having arrived in the city of Uzhgorod in the Ukrainian region of Zakarpattia we trained 32 caregivers, teachers and therapists.
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This year, the Sounds of Change Academy is offering another intensive three-day training programme, one weekend, for professionals and advanced students who want to learn and work with the Sounds of Change method and mindset. The training is open to people who already have experience in leading music sessions with groups, community music projects and/or work experience as a music therapist.
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We held our 7th annual Orchestra of Changemakers Meet-Up in Amsterdam on April 14. The event proved to be both moving and energising so we are pleased to share this update with you.
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At the beginning of this March we gave two training courses in Turkey.
It was a special week, which we would like to tell you about.
The organisation Welthungerhilfe had asked us to train two teams of their employees simultaneously in Gaziantep and Mardin. Welthungerhilfe offers psychosocial support (PSS) to children, young people and adults in northwest Syria and southern Turkey, victims of the war in Syria and the earthquake of 6th Februari 2023, killing more than 40,000 people and erasing entire cities.
Safe Spaces in Unsafe Places: Talking with Lucas Dols of Sounds of Change
Patrick Scafidi, executive editor of online platform The Ensemble, conducted an interview with Sounds of Change founder and director Lucas Dols. We are proud to feature an excerpt of that conversation in this newsletter.
The Ensemble’s mission is to connect and inform all people who are committed to ensemble music education for youth empowerment and social change.
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.
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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.
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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!
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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'.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Is there a particular song you listen to when you’re experiencing strong emotions? Such as sadness, anxiety, loneliness, or anger…? Perhaps you feel heartbroken, ill or cold, or disconnected from the world? In other words: what is your 'musical medicine'?
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With the COVID-19 crisis, many daily jobs and tasks went ‘online’, which in turn forced us to ask ourselves the question: Can we somehow do our training sessions online?
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Our Uber driver dropped us off at the side of the road, as we had asked him to do. He had already started to drive off, but stopped and opened his window to warn us. We assured him that this really was the right location and we walked down some little steps next to the highway.
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In this huge and poor neighbourhood of Caïro, El Ezba, there is only one school for the million people that live here. I underestimated the poverty and limited resources of the people here (more than half of the people in Cairo live below the poverty line) and this makes the need for a local organisation like Ruwwad even more important then I thought. They bring the community together and create positive opportunities for youth and children.
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