MESDA Group – Music Education for Social Development Agency – based at Harvard University’s Cultural Agents Initiative, MESDA offers after-school orchestra programs for at-risk youth in the Americas in order to effectively and positively affect their lives. MESDA aims to bring about change through qualities and values acquired in ensemble music making, such as discipline, teamwork, self-esteem, creative thinking and problem solving.
MESDA has ongoing programs with the Indigenous Children and Youth Orchestra of Canaima, Venezuela, with the Sainte Trinité École de Musique in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, as well as with the Acordes de Esperanza bi-national youth orchestra, in which Dominican and Haitian youth perform together. MESDA will be expanding to Mexico as well as other sites. In a vanguard program MESDA has pioneered a hybrid educational model that bridges music and literacy, called Musical PRE-Texts, which merges classical music education with Harvard University’s Cultural Agents’ arts-literacy program. The combined approach trains facilitators to develop a range of interrelated musical and higher order intellectual skills programs for children and youth.
Contact:
info@mesdagroup.org
