Foster Children Benefit from Free Music Lessons
Since 2009, the KING program has mentored more than 600 young musicians. For kids in foster care, a weekly commitment such as this offers crucial stability and security to their chaotic lives. Each student is paired with a specific mentor who meets with the child for regular instruction on the instrument of their choice. When they’re ready, they get a chance to perform public recitals for enthusiastic audiences.
Foster kids are usually shuffled from home to home to home within the system, so not only do KING music mentors commit for a minimum of one year, but they agree to go to the student. Wherever they are. The instructor’s determination to follow the budding musician from placement to placement speaks love and respect to a hurting child.
“Kids in foster care often aren’t looking to the future, they’re thinking, ‘how am I going to survive today?’…and through our program one of our main goals is to get them to look towards their future and think about what they want, what their dreams are, so we host different student workshops and music journaling and songwriting and music production, really getting them to think about the fact they can be a success.”
Statistics are typically grim for the academic success of foster children. In Texas alone, 30,000 children suffer in the system and not even half … read the rest from KLove Radio
