Music plays an important part in all of our lives. It can be exciting or calming, jubilant or poignant. Music can bring out memories that have been deeply buried and powerfully resonate with our feelings, helping us to express them and to communicate with others.

Music therapy uses these qualities and the musical components of rhythm, melody and tonality within a therapeutic relationship. In music therapy, children work with a wide range of instruments and their voices to create a musical language of their own. This language allows them to express their emotions and to start to relate to the world outside of themselves in a positive way.

Backgrounds of abuse, ill-health, poverty and violence are common amongst the children Emunah cares for in Israel.   Music therapy is just one of the ways that Emunah supports children. Some of our most traumatised and dysfunctional children are already benefiting from the ‘Lord and Lady Sacks Music therapy programme’ in our residential children’s home in Afula.

Speaking at the 2012 Emunah Young Musician Final Lord Sacks praised Emunah’s work saying, “Music has wonderful healing powers. When you think of the incredible work that Emunah does I cannot think of anything better for Elaine and myself to be associated with.”

Through music, children are able to express their emotions and with the expert support of a music therapist they can start to heal.

As well as funding the exosting music therapy programme at the Sarah Herzog Children’s Centre in Afula, we are looking to expand the provision of music therapy at Emunah’s Neve Landy Children’s Village, in southern Israel, where 74 severely disturbed and dysfunctional boys live and receive intensive therapeutic support. For these boys, Emunah represents their only chance of a normal life. Without the support we give them, they would be locked up in psychiatric units or hospitals. Essential to the rehabilitation of each child is an individual programme of study, counselling, therapy and enrichment specially designed to meet the child’s particular needs. Therapies on offer currently include drama, art, horse-riding, animal-welfare, sports as well as fundamental psychological counselling. We  want to ensure that each child at Neve Landy who needs music therapy is able to receive it.