Peru - Growing up with music: the goal of the Salesians in Calca

11 March 2019

(ANS - Calca) - Today in Peru there is much enthusiastic talk about economic growth, which unfortunately is not reflected in the living conditions of the peasants of remote villages in the country's interior. In the area of Calca, a peasant community in the Andean Sierra, progress and well-being have never arrived. It is for these people that the Salesians have begun to set things in motion.

In the area of Calca the poverty rate is very high; high, too,  the rate of child malnutrition and family violence. Access to education for children and young people in the valleys is very limited: many of them have to walk four hours a day during their home-school trips, exposing themselves to dangers such as sexual abuse, abduction for the purpose of human trafficking and induction to child prostitution.

The Salesian mission in Calca takes care of 40 rural communities spread over a route of 3000 km, for a total of over 27,000 beneficiaries.

The "Don Bosco" house welcomes about 40 children and youngsters coming from far away areas and from social-family contexts that are not able to guarantee them a serene growth. At the Salesian house these minors receive hospitality, but also the opportunity to grow up in a familiar and cheerful environment, attending workshops, after-school courses and sports-related courses.

To offer children and adolescents an integral education, providing them with the necessary means - human and material - for an optimal use of their studies and for the global development of their personality, reaching an adequate integration in society and becoming Christian promoters, leaders, animators in their own communities: this is the goal of the Salesians of Calca.

Currently, the Salesians who animate the missionary youth center have developed a new idea: they want to start a music workshop that would involve 41 children. The value of the project is twofold, both cultural and psychological: on the one hand, to help young people to keep their roots through the study and the realization of folk songs; on the other, to favor the psycho-physical well-being that musical activities transmit. The students will attend the course twice a week for 2 hours of lessons each time, so as to maximize all the benefits that this activity generates.

Traditional Pan flutes, but also triangles, wooden bass drums and modern musical keyboards ... Of these instruments, there is now an urgent need in the mission. The children of Calca are only waiting for someone to give them the chance to dream through music.

For more information, visit: www.missionidonbosco.org 

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