History of the Children's Music Initiative

In 1998, Slobodan Milosovic ordered Serbian security forces to escalate a ten-year campaign of repression against the Albanian population of Kosova into a scorched-earth ethnic cleansing campaign. After a four-month NATO bombing campaign, Serbian forces withdrew from Kosova in 1999. The decade-long conflict left over 300,000 people without shelter, over 10,000 dead, and mass graves, each containing bodies of up to one hundred civilians, including women and children. The war also created over one million refugees.

Pictures of ethnic cleansing in Kosovo--refugee camps, burned out homes, prisoners of war, mourning women, and traumatized children--moved Liz Shropshire, a Los Angeles composer and music teacher, to undertake a brave and important project for the children of Kosovo beginning in 1999. Drawing on her advanced degrees in musical composition and twenty years' experience in music and education, she envisioned a musical education program for Kosovo's refugee children. Liz contacted instrument manufacturers, held fundraising activities, and emptied her savings account, amassing a total of 140 harmonicas, 130 penny whistles, 50 pairs of drumsticks, 4 electric keyboards, 60 beginning piano books, 500 pencils, a portable stereo and a portable tape recorder.

Liz chose as her base of operations the town of Gjakove, one of the cities hardest hit by ethnic cleansing. In Summer and Fall 1999, Liz successfully organized and taught a short-term music program for 300 refugee children at Gjakove's Mustafa Bakije primary school and the “Brickcamp” transit shelter camp. The programs were called The Kosovo Children’s Music Initiative (KCMI).

During 2000 - 2001, the Shropshire Music Foundation was formally organized and granted tax-exempt status in order to raise funds for KCMI. Programs continued at Mustafa Bakije primary school and were started at Gjakove’s Zecharije Rexha primary school serving 450 students and at Pushmorije Drini, an United Nations-sponsored summer camp serving 400 homeless children with missing or dead parents. Program offerings included daily classes in singing, drumming, pennywhistle, and harmonica, “sing-a-longs,” and performances for families and friends.

In Summer 2001, KCMI returned to the summer camp, now called Pushmorije Ereniku, with a new emphasis on teaching tolerance through human rights-themed vocal music, singing instruction, and performance. Programmatic development was designed to coordinate with changing camp enrollment, which this summer included greater numbers of minority Roma (Gypsy) and Bosniak children.

During 2002 – 2003, KCMI developed new projects serving disabled youth and adults, schoolteachers, and rural populations. Weekly classes in singing, pennywhistle, harmonica, and percussion for elementary and junior high students expanded to serve students from M.Bakije, Z. Rexha, and M. Kapuska Schools as well as the Slovene Village and Konvikt Transit Shelter Camps. In August 2002 and 2003, KCMI students were featured musicians in the "Crossing the Bridges" International Children's Concert and Festival in Pejë, Kosovo, where they performed their signature song “O Q'Bote e Buker / O What a Wonderful World it Would be if All Men would Live like Brothers."

In August 2004, the Muscatine (Iowa) Children’s Choir brought ten KCMI students and three youth volunteers to the USA for two weeks of joint concerts throughout Iowa and Illinois. They provided everything, from the plane tickets to the US visa fees. The Kosovar children and youth volunteers stayed in the homes of the American choir members. This was a life-changing experience for all who participated, and the Muscatine Children’s Choir is planning to bring a group of children and adults to Gjakove during Summer 2005.

From 2003 - 2005, KCMI has significantly strengthened its base of local youth volunteers, who now maintain day-to-day programs and perform in concerts with the students. A gifted contingent of thirty volunteers, intensively trained by Liz, now handles instruction and lesson plans for all of our regular music classes, as well as new volunteer and school teacher training. Burim Vraniqi, an extremely talented young adult from Gjakove, is Kosovo Program Director. Through musical education and teacher training programs, KCMI now reaches approximately 1,000 children in Kosova every year.

In August 2004, the Muscatine (Iowa) Children’s Choir brought ten KCMI students and three youth volunteers to the USA for two weeks of joint concerts throughout Iowa and Illinois. They provided everything, from the plane tickets to the US visa fees. The Kosovar children and youth volunteers stayed in the homes of the American choir members. This was a life-changing experience for all who participated, and the Muscatine Children’s Choir is planning to bring a group of children and adults to Gjakove during Summer 2005.

In Fall 2004, the Shropshire Music Foundation began an innovative new project serving the war-affected children of Northern Ireland: Peace Through Music Northern Ireland. We offer bi-weekly after-school classes in singing, harmonica, and drumming at community centers in Belfast and Omagh. Through volunteer staff training programs, we are steadily increasing our program capacity and plan to expand to new community centers throughout Northern Ireland in the coming year. Community concerts bring together children from all ongoing probgrams. In partnership with the Republic of Ireland-based Glencree Center for Reconciliation, a camp is being planned for Fall 2005. Disadvantaged children from Belfast and Dublin will be brought to the Glencree Center for a 2-week music camp led by the Kosovo Youth Volunteers.

In Winter 2004, the Shropshire Music Foundation was contacted by Vanessa Contopulos, a music therapist planning to serve the war-traumatized children of Northern Uganda under the auspices of the organization Invisible Children. Contopulos and Invisible Children have received training and free pennywhistles, pennywhistle bags, teaching, and training materials from the Shropshire Music Foundation. Since March 2005, our Child Song Uganda programs have benefited former child soldiers and “night commuter” refugee children fleeing abduction. SMF will continue to provide instruments and training for these programs, and Liz will travel to Uganda in 2006 to oversee the program’s development.

The Shropshire Music Foundation believes that programs teaching children peace through music can change the lives of war-impacted children and help build peace in war-ravaged communities worldwide. We seek to build our organization to touch the lives of war-impacted children around the globe. We are committed to growing, sustaining, and funding these programs so that we can reach thousands more children throughout the world. Our goal is to help children know that they always have the power to make their own choices, that the path of peace leads to happiness and security, that weapons do not equal power and safety, and that violence is not the answer. Sometimes a song can give us the strength to turn away from that which is wrong. Our goal is for these children to become instruments of peace.

© 2005 Shropshire Music Foundation. All Rights Reserved.