Education & Music
The story began with the grand-piano of my father, Theo Willemze. When we sold it, the idea was born to save the revenues, as a beginning, to build a school or start an educational project in Sierra Leone. My father always loved to give to charities and by doing this his rich musical legacy will get a well-deserved sequel. Moreover, we do justice to his philantropic attitude. Together with one of his students (Bobby Rootveld) we are working out this beautiful project. Will you join?
Arjé Willemze, Chairman
Our challenge
In Sierra Leone education is not obvious for every child. Often, the walking distance to schools is too long for the younger age-groups. That long that they will finally start going to school when they are big enough to walk themselves. This causes an enormous delay in their learning process.
Furthermore, education is not free in Sierra Leone. Children, whose parents don't have money to pay schoolfees, wil not go to school and are thus predestined to stay illiterate the rest of their lives.
We take it as a challenge to tackle this. That's why we either want to build a school in a village where the youngest children don't have access to education or start an educational project to fight educational disadvantages. In our school or project all children in a community will get access to education in order to develop their talents, even the poorest.
The Project
To address the educational backlog of children in Sierra Leone and Nigeria, we aim to build a school or start an education project. For a school, we are still looking for a plot of land; for an education project in collaboration with one or more existing schools, fortunately, this is not necessary, and we can start immediately. One thing is certain: the school or project will be named after my father, Theo Willemze, and music education will, of course, be given a prominent place.
As you can see in the video, there is no shortage of talent. This video is recorded in Matogo village, where we also run agricultural projects.
