Música na Rua (Music in the Street)

Angola, 2019-2020

Social Responsibility

Project story

At-risk children, living on the streets, may fall prey to the lure of drugs and crime. Fundação Arte e Cultura (Art and Culture Foundation) launched Music on the Street to provide a social support framework, developing ties of trust with the young people though activities based on music and other educational arts.

The project strives to locate the children’s families and bring them back home, when possible, or find alternative shelters for them. The Foundation also supports some of the shelters, providing free lessons in various educational topics. Additional Foundation programs provide ongoing support as the children grow into adulthood.

The process

Challenge

To lure at-risk youth off the streets and into a support framework focused on “bringing them back home”.

Approach

Creating a framework based upon organized activities in the educational arts, especially music, during which strong, trusting relationships can be established with the young people.

Solution

Music in the Street creates ongoing social connections with the young people, while seeking to help them reconnect with the families or find accommodation in shelters, which the Foundation also supports with free educational activities.

Some numbers

SDGs we followed

4· 5· 10

Quality education• Gender equality• Reduced inequalities

Overall meetings

+1K

Some numbers

SDGs we followed

4· 5· 10

Quality education• Gender equality• Reduced inequalities

Overall meetings

+1K

In conversation
with Naama Margalit

Naama Margalit is the Director-General of Fundação Arte e Cultura.

I lived most of my life in a small Israeli village. When Haim Taib first proposed that I manage the Fundação Arte e Cultura in Angola, it was a totally new experience, in a new country and with a language I didn’t speak. But my love for art, music and people helped me a lot in developing a host of social projects based on the educational arts. such as Music in the Street, and many more.

The Foundation expresses Mitrelli Group’s social responsibility by offering new opportunities to vulnerable, at-risk children, youth and women, as well as the general public. Art and culture bring us and bind us together as we seek to empower the people we serve. Our new cultural center in Luanda holds music, dance, singing and painting activities, among others, for more than 350 children a day.

As we like to say at the Foundation: “Each of us is a small, light, but together we are a mighty flame.”