Our Mission

The Shropshire Music Foundation's mission is to redress psychosocial trauma, advance emotional health, develop scholastic achievement, foster ethnic tolerance, promote peace, and improve the quality of life for war-affected children and adolescents through the establishment of on-going music education and performance programs. The foundation was conceived in 1999 by Liz Shropshire, a Los Angeles-based music teacher and composer. Since then this remarkable organization has touched the lives of over 9,500 children in Kosovo, Northern Ireland and northern Uganda.

Our programs implement recommendations issued by the United Nations and UNICEF in their report on the “Impact of Armed Conflict on Children” (1996). The report found that the most effective child war trauma relief programs provide “opportunity for expression and structured activities such as school, play and sports.” UN Expert Graca Machel cited music, theater, and arts education programs, especially those based in local culture.

Our youth volunteer training programs also respond to UN and UNICEF findings on the acute war-related needs of adolescents. Adolescents have special emotional health related needs and face specific challenges, including intensive family care burdens and recruitment or impressment into armed conflict. Even so, Ms. Machel writes, “Adolescents, during or after wars, seldom receive any special attention or assistance.” Her report suggests that “one particularly effective way to give adolescents a sense of meaning and purpose is to involve them in developing and implementing programs for younger children in the community.”

Responding to the needs of our target population and expert findings, our programs are designed to meet these objectives:

• Address participants’ war-related emotional and developmental needs, particularly psychosocial trauma
• Provide structured opportunities for play, learning, group interaction, and self-expression
• Build cognitive skills, including logic, memory, computation, and
• Establish employment, volunteer, and leadership opportunities for youths and adults
• Foster communication, cooperation, and understanding among ethnic communities
• Create sustainable community-based, community-led opportunities for social change

© 2005 Shropshire Music Foundation. All Rights Reserved.