Field Band Foundation’s National Championship 2017

As introduced in the previous blog post, we are now a new PULSE team working in Johannesburg, South Africa (PULSE5). The first weeks we had a lot to learn and take over from the previous PULSE team (PULSE4), and we are now starting to figure out exactly what our job contains and how we can work with this project and develop it further.

Field Band Foundation 20 years

Saturday, October 7^th, the PULSE team went to Alexandra stadium to help out, and watch the Field Band Foundation’s National Championship. The Field Band Foundation are celebrating 20 years this year, so this was both a championship and a celebration. Important people like the Mayer Johannesburg attended the event. There were 11 different field bands from around South Africa that were qualified for the competition. It was an honour to observe all these children, youths and young adults performing and watching the joy they felt by playing and dancing. The different bands performed at their very best, having prepared for this competition for a long time. We were worried about the weather, because the forecast predicted a lot of rain. Fortunately the rain and hail waited until 15 min after the competition was finished.

This week, the PULSE team are preparing for our very first educational band visit, which will take place next week in Setlabotjha. The goal for this educational band visit and the next band visits are continuing the work PULSE4 have done by visiting the bands they didn’t get time to visit, to educate and focus on disability awareness and the correlation between music and health. We are really looking forward to start facilitating these educational band visits together with our colleagues and the peer educators.