Playing for Change Foundation

I truly believe that music is our universal language and the best way we can level the playing field for kids in need around the globe. We all speak it. We all need it in our lives. As many studies will tell you, there is no greater way to close the academic gap than through music education.

What drew me so intensely to the work of PFCF is that we are elevating the current and future lives of the children in our schools through their own culture. We do this because each area we work in may be economically poor, but is exceedingly rich in culture; with their own instruments, songs, languages, and heritage on which to draw upon and rise up through. All of our programs are run by local leaders that we identify and support in ensuring each school is both educating and providing social change.

We currently have 16 schools, and a waitlist of 10 countries.  The best way to establish these new programs is to travel to each and visit with potential individual and organizational partners, which is how I would use the funds provided by the Elevate Prize should I be selected as a winner.

I want to change the way we think about and value arts education. The way we utilize it to connect the world and find more global understanding. The way we can value, elevate and preserve culture within it. The way that kids with next to nothing can find their future through it. 

I consider myself a nonprofit entrepreneur, in that I have taken multiple organizations from infancy to necessity with budgets, infrastructure and programs to match. When I headed up Josh Groban’s Find Your Light Foundation, I was able to expand support from 15 arts education programs to 115 within 4 years. Within my time at PFCF, we have already grown our budget by 300%, established new programs and partnerships, and provided much-needed instruments, staff and facilities to each of our existing schools.

I’ve built my career using the arts to create educational and social change because I truly believe there is no better tool to level the playing field for youth across the globe, while additionally creating pathways to connect and understand each other no matter where we might come from.

Playing for Change Foundation was established to create positive change through music and arts education. Across 12 countries, we serve socially marginalized and economically disadvantaged communities, targeting youth and identifying local cultural actors to lead programming. Though our programs are located in low and lower-middle income countries, they are home to great cultural wealth, which we utilize to create educational and social opportunities. Each community where we operate also suffers from poor educational institutions, resulting in under-educated and under-engaged local youth. 

We currently operate 16 music programs in 12 countries, offering weekly music lessons and cultural activities free of charge. Since 2007 we have positively impacted more than 40,000 lives, including 3,000 youth weekly in 2019. We employ more than 200 staff, teachers, and community leaders locally across all programs. Eight programs use cultural activities to directly address racial discrimination among ethnic minorities, such as in Morocco among both Black and indigenous communities; others address gender inequality, like in Nepal where music is used to combat sex-trafficking and early child marriage; and all fight for cultural justice among diverse communities, like in the Mirpur slum of Dhaka, Bangladesh or in remote villages in southern Mali. 

PFCF’s model and methodology foremost relies on establishing and sustaining presences in communities otherwise ignored within their own national or regional contexts. In eight out of 16 locations, our music programs serve as the only community organizations working to engage local youth through culture and the arts. 

Our newest program in the Bidi Bidi Refugee Settlement in northern Uganda, for example, is the only access point for South Sudanese refugee youth to practice and celebrate their cultural heritages, as well as develop positive social-emotional skills through creative activities. In the remaining eight locations, our programs are the only organizations working at our particular neighborhood level. 

In Tijuana, Mexico, our program targets the most at-risk youth among the most dangerous neighborhoods like Zona Norte and Camino Verde. Gangs not only plague these neighborhoods through violence, but also through recruiting boys as young as 13 years old. 

Once engaged, we offer otherwise inaccessible educational and cultural resources to local youth. Over the last two years we have also developed new approaches using technology to address digital literacy and teach music and video production for youth to explore digital mediums of creative expression. Such initiatives are unprecedented among many of our communities.  

Embedded in all that we do is an urgency in giving marginalized youth opportunities to determine their own futures. Many of our 3,000 youth face impoverishment, and all of our youth face institutionalized racial, social, or cultural discrimination that block opportunities and resources from ever reaching them. Our work in Cape Town, South Africa, for example, bolsters educational resources in classrooms and gives students across 10 public schools access to structured after school activities to learn new creative skills and thrive under the mentorship and guidance of empowered leaders and musicians. These schools would otherwise lack these resources or programming as Apartheid era laws still effect which resources are delivered to predominately Black townships. Myriad examples of similar change can be given among all program locations.  

During this COVID-19 crisis, we’ve worked with local leaders to provide emergency food to more than 1200 families worldwide, and health supplies across all locations. We also took stock of local needs with our international staff and established a multi-year approach to expanding our impact worldwide, engaging partners like the United Nations and Bill Gates to amplify our efforts and support us in realizing positive change on the ground.