by CHARLOTTE TURNER
Flemingo-Foundation-The-Music-Project-leadTravel retailer Flemingo International has signed an agreement to partner with The Music Project, as part of CSR initiatives managed by the Flemingo Foundation.
Flemingo will sponsor music education for the children of Lakdas De Mel College, Kurunegla in Sri Lanka between April 2016 and March 2017.
The sponsorship includes weekly classes, holiday programmes, festival programmes, a competition as well as the bi-annual UNITE orchestra residential workshop, where children from all schools come together.
The Music Project, inspired by El Sistema (a publicly financed voluntary sector music education programme in Venezuela), aims to provide the individuals involved with a sense of musical achievement.
LINKS BETWEEN NORTH AND SOUTH “It provides those whose lives might have been affected by poverty, war or abuse, a therapeutic and holistic opportunity to excel and fulfil their own potential within a thriving musical community,” says Flemingo.
“The project aims to provide links between the children of the north and south using music as the link language and to ensure long term ties.
“As the programme progresses, the two orchestral communities from the north and south, work together to perform and participate in workshops that would involve instrumentalists and specialists.”
Flemingo says that this end result would ensure that the children of two diverse communities establish links through music, thereby achieving ‘social cohesion, unity and harmony’.
EDUCATE TO PROTECT
Since its inception the Flemingo Foundation has focused on children and previously ran a very successful educational and humanitarian project ‘Educate to protect’.
This initiative raised awareness amongst Sri Lankan school children, as well as their parents and educators, against silent child abuse.
In three years, the programme had reached out to more than 2,5000 children and 6000 adults, ‘thus enabling and empowering them for a better life’, says Flemingo.
Flemingo has also sponsored SOS villages in Chennai, India and Africa in the past.