For Children in War Zones, Strains of Happiness and Hope

February 17, 2006 -(The Washington Post) Music can have a magical effect on children accustomed to the rumble of artillery fire, the dispiriting drone of warplanes and the life-threatening bark of the enemy.

For the past six years, Liz Shropshire, the founder and director of the Shropshire Music Foundation, has devoted her life to teaching children in war zones to sing and play instruments as a way to bring them out of their trauma.

"I always felt music was a selfish thing," she said. "I loved writing music, and I always felt so guilty I enjoyed it so much. I never thought I could use music to help people on this scale or witness the power of music changing lives."

Keith Porter, who had made an award-winning radio program about Shropshire, has watched her in action in Kosovo many times.

"Scores of kids come running from the converted cargo containers shouting, 'Liza! Liza!' as soon as they see Liz's jeep pull in," said Porter, director of communication for the Stanley Foundation, a peace and security research organization based in Iowa. "There is no doubt that this is the highlight of their week. Nothing in their lives is for them except this class."

Squealing knots of children swarm around Shropshire not only in Gjakova, Kosovo, where the trained composer and musician began her project, but also in Northern Ireland and Uganda.

One day in 1999, Shropshire, 45, who was living in Los Angeles, heard a report on National Public Radio about families in Kosovo uprooted and separated during the war in the Balkans.

She contacted Volunteers For Peace and Balkan Sunflowers, nonprofit organizations active in organizing relief volunteers to assist in the Balkans, and asked to enlist. She paid her own travel expenses as well as room and board for what she thought would be a basic relief mission tending to children and helping carry water.

Before she left, a neighbor suggested that Shropshire take some kind of music program with her. Using donations and what was left in her savings account, Shropshire went shopping for instruments to take with her. She also asked manufacturers to contribute to the effort.

With 140 harmonicas, 130 tin whistles, 50 pairs of drumsticks, four electric keyboards, 60 piano books for beginners, 500 pencils, a portable stereo and a tape recorder stuffed into eight duffle bags, she left for Kosovo on a U.N. World Food Program flight.

"From the plane, I could see the houses burning. I was scared, but I also felt it was so important that it did not really matter," recalled Shropshire.

She set up her project in the town of Gjakova. "That town had seen more killing, more rapes, more men gone missing than anywhere else. It was absolutely atrocious. After just two days in Gjakova, it felt so right to be there, more right than anything I had ever done in my life," she said last week during a brief stay in Washington.

"I started the program with nine kids, and in a couple of weeks I had 90. Over the span of six weeks, I had taught 300 children and given out 300 instruments, but what was so special was the difference I saw," she said.

She returned home, but within a few months she was back in Kosovo with War Child, a nongovernmental organization working in several parts of Kosovo. On her day off each week, she braved the bad roads to revisit Gjakova.

"You could not walk within half a mile of the camp without hearing someone tinkering with an instrument," she said. "I would walk around the town and hear a harmonica playing. Sure enough, it would turn out to be one of my students." She was hooked.

Shropshire returned to Los Angeles and started talking to church groups to help her get started. At one session, a woman offered to be Shropshire's accountant if she formed a nonprofit, and a man volunteered his services as a lawyer. The Shropshire Music Foundation (www.teachingchildrenpeace.com) was born in 2000.

Now Shropshire divides her time among her programs, fundraising in the United States and training future volunteers and music therapists who keep things going while she is away.

"This music therapy not only gives kids a sense of accomplishment and pride. . . . Simultaneously reading music, counting rhythm and playing an instrument leaves little mental space for thinking about the atrocities of the war," Porter said in an e-mail.

In Belfast, Shropshire has helped children overcome the divide between Catholics and Protestants by providing them with a safe environment in her classes. While attending segregated schools, they can share music together.

In Uganda, her program has helped child soldiers and night commuter children -- youngsters who walk for miles each night in search of a safe place to sleep to avoid being kidnapped by soldiers.

The experience has moved to at least three other locations in Kosovo, and she is now actively trying to raise funds so she can revisit her program in Uganda next year.

"I want children to feel good enough about themselves so they can stand up and say, 'I am not going to be pulled into this war,' " she said, adding that her goal in life is for children once terrorized by war to become "instruments of peace."

From:http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?did=988591541&Fmt=3&clientId=2641&RQT=309&VName=PQD