Welcome to Music for Africa

I started this charity in 1999. On my first trip to South Africa, I saw a young boy playing an empty oil can with a piece of wood nailed onto it as a guitar. As a professional guitarist myself, this touched me very deeply. There is no music education in the curriculum at schools in South Africa but I could see how much these people needed both music education and musical instruments.

So with the help of the local people I set about starting an independent music school at Lehlake school in Phokwane.Thus The Lehlake Music Project began and has been funded by Music for Africa, which is mainly supported by people in the UK, ever since.

THE LEHLAKE MUSIC PROJECT now teaches about 150 children and older students to learn classical and electric guitar, keyboard and drums in this remote part of South Africa. All our tuition and instruments are provided free. Each student has their own instrument to learn with, which they can take home. Music For Africa also built three large classrooms in 2002 to help with the growing number of students at the school.

Our four South African staff are very motivated and extremely dedicated. Since 2004, Music for Africa has entered over 100 students for Grade Exams with Trinity College of Music London. An examiner from the UK flies out every year to do this. In 2006/7, we won three bronze medal awards from Trinity College for three of our students who gained the highest marks in Grade 1 Classical guitar. The College only awards 50 bronze medals worldwide each year so this is an incredible achievement.

Please consider joining our new ’100CLUB’ or making a donation to help our valuable work continue. Click here to find out more.

Thank you.

Tom Toomey

Founder and Chairman

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