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Marimbas speak louder than words

In 2007, Marcelino Fielies and seven other “troublemakers” at a primary school in Heideveld, were referred to the Music for Life Programme. Seven years later, Marcelino is a marimba teacher, community role model and proud MusicWorks facilitator. [hr style=”1″ margin=”40px 0px 40px 0px”] In Marcelino’s words: “I would like to work with people in my community, through music. My community has too much gangsterism. People do bad stuff to fit in with other people. I want to make the world a better place. My plan with music is to teach it to other people of all ages… [ ]. I care for the people in the community… I am going to print in their minds that they can fit in by doing good stuff as well. I’ve been playing the marimbas and drums for five years with MusicWorks. I started to teach children in my community to play marimba since the beginning of 2012. I can actually see what they are going through in life, because before I was part of it. I crawled, then I walked. Now I am running… I never knew I would get as far as I did. … I observed what other people did, and I thought to myself, I… Read More »Marimbas speak louder than words

MTCC’s response to violence against women and children

February 2013 will be remembered as the month in which all South Africans became acutely aware of the enormous extent of the violence perpetrated against women and children. Everyone reading a newspaper, listening to the radio, or watching the news have heard the dire statistics: of how a woman or child is raped in our country every four minutes; how the level of rape in South Africa is higher than in war torn countries. I was listening to the radio a few days after Aneen Booysen’s rape and murder. People were phoning in and making suggestions of solutions and answers to the big question: how do we fix this? I realised that the work MTCC does with vulnerable children and young people, forms part of the constructive response to such devastation. Our music therapists return from site telling a story of 3 children in 1 music therapy group who had been raped; this is a group of 6 year olds. Our community development worker speaks with passion about young men in marimba bands who grow up in a community where they have very few role models; where often men in their family and community are in gangs, abuse drugs and have no respect for women.… Read More »MTCC’s response to violence against women and children