What We Do
“The Australian Children’s Music Foundation programs are designed to bring joy and inspiration to the lives of children and youth who are on the wrong side of advantage. Children who have been abused, neglected, traumatised. Children who are “lost”. Music enhances creativity and imagination, self-esteem and self-expression. You need all of these attributes if you are to change your life for the better.”
~ Don Spencer OAM, Founder
Our proud achievements :
- ACMF music programs reach over 3000 children and youth weekly, with programs running in kindergartens, primary, secondary, behavioural schools and 17 of the 20 Juvenile Detention Centres Australia-wide.
- The ACMF music program in the NSW Youth Drug and Alcohol Court Program was described by Hilary Hannam (the Children’s Court Magistrate in 2010) as “the best program incorporated in the Court Program in the last 10 years”.
- Over the last nine years, the ACMF has donated more than $410,000 worth of musical instruments to less privileged young people through schools, foundations, and through the annual National Songwriting Competition.
- A Darwin based school that had serious truancy problems, reported as much as a 90% school attendance rate, as a direct result of the ACMF music program implementation.
- The Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations continues to endorse every ACMF program.
- NSW Juvenile Justice Department continues to sponsor the ACMF music program in four NSW Juvenile Justice Centres.
“As the Minister for School Education, Early Childhood and Youth, I would like to congratulate the Australian Children’s Music Foundation for its work in schools throughout Australia.
In particular for the immensely valuable work of the Foundation in Juvenile Justice Centres and in disadvantaged and Indigenous communities.
I commend the ACMF for their sterling work to inspire young Australians using the power of music.”
~ The Hon. Peter Garrett AM MP
