El Sistema in America: Improving Access to Music Education for Our Nation’s Most Underprivileged Youth

Problem Statement

Since 1975, the El Sistema movement in Venezuela has utilized government funding to provide free classical music education for over two million children in poverty. Though El Sistema-inspired programs in the United States have emerged in recent years, the El Sistema USA movement lacks long-term sustainability due to its reliance on private sources of funding. Currently, students in America’s highest poverty schools are fifty percent less likely to receive music education than their more affluent peers. In fact, today 1.3 million elementary students have no access to music education. In October 2012, supporters of El Sistema came together to form the National Alliance of El Sistema Inspired Programs. The El Sistema movement in the United States has potential to transform the lives of some of America’s most at-risk youth, yet without greater awareness and support for the newly formed alliance at the national level, the El Sistema movement in the United States may seize to exist in the future.