Evidence shows music education provides extraordinary benefits to at-risk children.

We began by supporting El Sistema inspiration in Los Angeles afterschool programs. Our 2014 documentary "I Am a Fine Musician" tells that story.

Our purpose has now expanded to include the globe. We'll focus on the value of combining the El Sistema model with social service organizations such as Children International. We're especially interested in showing how these ensemble-based programs for young people, when combined with the expertise of social service professionals, help children move out of poverty.

El Sistema: a conception regarding the function of music within society.

Developed in Venezuela and now expanding world-wide, El Sistema empowers disadvantaged youth and their communities, using music as the tool. El Sistema-inspired programs use ensembles to teach children to play music. The children learn discipline, team work, and leadership through the practice of classical music.

The historic bridge from elitist assumptions about music to the music in CI is El Sistema, founded in Venezuela in 1975 by Maestro José Antonio Abreu. At that time Abreu and a handful of other Venezuelan musicians felt that Europeans dominated their country’s musical stage and that music instruction was affordable only to the few. They wanted to break this down. Abreu has described El Sistema as “a conception regarding the function of music within society.” It is “based,” he says, “on the notion that a free, immersive classical music education of the poorest of the poor might positively influence the social programs plaguing the country.”

Today, over 40 years later, El Sistema has inspired music-teaching artists across the world. There are now thousands of youth in El Sistema programs in the USA alone.

The central goal of Children International and the El Sistema movement is to free children from the cycle of poverty.

Children International

Children International is focused on making long-term impact by helping kids living in poverty. Their vision: graduating healthy, educated, empowered and employed young adults from their programs so they can achieve the goal of breaking the cycle of poverty.