Tuesday (8/7) on the Global Press Institute website, Diana Engel reports, “From a white school building lost among the dirt roads in Buenos Aires province drifts the mixed chords of an orchestra. At 9 a.m. on a Saturday, the rest of the town is silent. … Through the cafeteria door, the sound resounds more clearly. There are percussion instruments, trombones, clarinets, cellos, bass guitars, violins and flutes. The kids who play them are between 10 and 20 years old, participants in the Programa Nacional de Orquestas y Coros Infantiles y Juveniles para el Bicentenario, a government program that aims to connect youth in underprivileged areas with music. … The Argentine government launched Nacional de Orquestas y Coros Infantiles y Juveniles para el Bicentenario in 2008 in order to offer more inclusive education to socially vulnerable children and adolescents. … The program drew inspiration from similar models in various Latin American countries, starting in Venezuela more than 30 years ago, according to Argentina’s Ministry of Education. … [Darío] Díaz, who directs two of the program’s orchestras, says that the initiative has gone even better than he had anticipated. ‘Before starting, I thought that I had to persuade the kids with an instrument or motivate them all the time,’ he says. ‘And it’s the reverse.’ ”
Posted August 8, 2012
