Ubuntu Music Program
Rwanda
Creating positive change through music education
Rwanda
The Playing For Change Foundation has been working in Rwanda since 2011 using traditional and modern music, as well as sports as tools for positive change and education.
The Ubuntu Music Program in the capital of Kigali and the community of Masaka targets at-risk youth risk inside 3 elementary and high schools. Traditional drumming, dance and modern music, as well as sports are offered to students. Cultural activities for youth from the communities where the Ubuntu Music Program operates are not otherwise accessible.
“Ubuntu” itself means “humanity towards others,” and the Ubuntu philosophy can be summed up as “I am because we are” and is based on the idea that there is a universal bond of sharing that connects all humanity. This program reaches 150 youth per week.
Rwanda is a landlocked country in East-Central Africa with 12,5 million inhabitants. The economy has been growing over the last decades and access to education and healthcare have soared. Kinyarwanda is the language spoken by almost the entire population of the country and the official language alongside with English, French and Swahili.
The Ubuntu Music Program provides music and dance classes to over 150 children distributed across 3 schools: 2 in Kigali and one in Masaka (Star School).
"A person with ubuntu is open and available to others, affirming of others, does not feel threatened that others are able and good, for he or she has a proper self-assurance that comes from knowing that he or she belongs in a greater whole and is diminished when others are humiliated or diminished, when others are tortured or oppressed."
Desmond Tutu
Culture and environment are very intertwined here in M’hamid. The weather turns from blistering hot in the summer (reaching 130 degrees Farenheit regularly in July and August) to sandstorm season in March and April, which helps to propagate the date palm trees, the economic power in the region. Climate change is a very real presence locally, with little access to water becoming normal, and the encroachment of sand dunes onto precious farmland happening right now, working to disperse not only communities, but ancient traditions with them.
In M’hamid there is a great importance placed on the community and people moving together in groups. Whether it be families of 10 living under the same roof eating from the same central Tagine dish for their meals, or the ritual of preparing and sharing tea with whomever may be around, foreigner or local, the sense of inclusion is vital to the community. The passing down of music and poetry from generation to generation is another vital aspect of the community, as art and tradition serve as reassurances in a constantly changing world. It is the role of the youngest generation to learn from the past to bring the traditional Saharan art into future, so at to coexist with the modern.
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OR SEND AN EMAIL TO info@playingforchange.org
OR SEND AN EMAIL TO info@playingforchange.org