Aqeelah: Healing through music

Name: Aqeelah Van Schyff
Community Issue: Youth Development
Hometown: Cape Town, Western Cape

Aqeelah decided to start a community action project (CAP) in 2012, focused on the upliftment of young people in and around her community. As a means of doing this she decided to combine her own passion for music, as a tool of helping young people, and approached a local orphanage within her community. It was her hope that music would an effective instrument in helping the children in the orphanage open up and speak about the issues that affect them.

With this in mind, Aqeelah recruited three of her friends to assist her with her CAP and together they taught 12 children in an orphanage how to play different instruments. The highlight of Aqeelah’s project was teaching a 7 year old girl who quickly picked up how to play the piano.