Sonidos de la Tierra – Community and social development through music

Sonidos de la Tierra (Sounds from the Earth) is a project for children and young, created by Luis Szarán,through the formation of music schools, musical groupings and cultural associations, it facilitates the shortcut to the musical education to more than 3.000 participants of scarce resources, in communities of the Paraguayan countryside.

Sonidos de la Tierra, is based on the concept of “education through arts” and began in 2002 in 18 towns, with support from the AVINA Foundation. Today, with alliances with more than 100 other local, national and international institutions, both public and private, the program reaches over 72 communities throughout Paraguay.

In Cateura, one of the many communities where Sonidos de la Tierra has music schools, started a project whose aim is to build musical instruments out of garbage, this city is one of the poorest in Paraguay, and a great amount of garbage is sent daily there.  People who work in this project say that they aren´t “looking for good musicians, but for good citizens”. Last month, the Recycled Instruments Orchestra from Cateura performed at the Entreperneurship Forum in the New Economy during the Rio+20 summit.

To know more about the project, you can visit http://www.sonidosdelatierra.org.py/

By Luis Bravo

Luis Bravo is a Business Management student at Universidad Iberoamericana in Puebla, México. He was an exchange student at Leuphana Universität, doing a 3-months Internship at Cultura21 in the framework of the Leuphana Plus Program, and continues to collaborate with Cultura21.