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14 Jul 2025 | |
Canada | |
2025 Finalists Global Student Prize |
Samantha Fung, a Canadian student, social changemaker, and founder of Music For Every Child (MFEC), is redefining inclusive education through the transformative power of music. From volunteering with non-verbal students at age 10 to founding a youth-led charity operating in six Canadian cities and across four African countries, Samantha is creating systems that bring neurodivergent and underserved students into the spotlight.
Her organisation, MFEC, provides year-round music therapy programmes that use musical intervention to build life skills, confidence, and communication for over 500 students with developmental disabilities. Under Samantha’s leadership, MFEC has engaged over 250 youth volunteers, raised more than CAD$150,000, and partnered with Canada’s largest school board and five others. In a ground-breaking model, music therapists work in classrooms weekly alongside student volunteers, building cross-peer empathy and inclusion.
Beyond MFEC, Samantha sits on the Peel Mental Health Advisory Board, advises a federal parliamentary youth council, and contributes to Child Rights Connect and the Canadian Council for Young Feminists. She is also a Global Youth Award winner, Diana Award recipient and judge, and ambassador for change.
Now a United World College student in the Netherlands, Samantha continues her advocacy internationally – expanding MFEC’s reach to refugee camps in Kenya, rural Liberia, inner-city Uganda, and isolated villages in Chad. She works alongside students from around the world, promoting a youth-for-youth approach to equity and global citizenship.
Academically, Samantha is equally distinguished. She is the only high school research assistant on a 50+ member team at the University Health Network in Toronto, Canada’s top research hospital, working under Tier 1 Canada Research Chair Dr. Angela Cheung on large-scale medical studies. She is a finalist for the RISE Global Challenge and has consistently maintained a 4.0 GPA, balancing her studies with elite gymnastics, ballet, and music throughout her childhood.
Samantha’s work is deeply personal. Having endured mental health struggles during COVID-19 that forced her to quit competitive gymnastics, she found renewed purpose in helping children who feel unseen – especially those with developmental challenges. Her innovative school-based music therapy model, which earned the Global Youth Award for Empowering Innovation, is now being studied in partnership with the University of Toronto and McMaster University to inform future inclusive education programmes.
Samantha plans to use the Global Student Prize to expand MFEC’s domestic and international programmes and launch research into music therapy’s effects across BIPOC, LGBTQI+, and socioeconomically disadvantaged groups.