Street children are easy targets for trafficking. At night, while left abandoned on the streets, many kids are abused and/or abducted. Years before the Not For Sale began, a grassroots organization called Generacíon (Spanish for “generation”) already had started working on the front lines in Lima, Peru aiming to prevent these tragedies.
Generacíon selected a small group of kids to teach how to play music. Within a couple of months, these children became very skilled with the Kena, Andean panflute, Charango, and drums. They started playing for compensation in city plazas and on buses. Most days they earned sufficient money for food and to rent a room.
Generacíon hoped that giving the children music lessons and instruments would provide them a tool for subsistence. But teaching a handful of children to make music caused a ripple effect that the organization never imagined. The small group of children that first learned to play music started teaching their friends. Their friends taught other groups, and so on. Today one can go to the streets of Lima and find many children playing music in the streets, on transport, and in restaurants to survive. Hundreds of children in the streets of Lima find in music a shield against destitution.
Giving children a tool for subsistence was what Generacíon could do in that moment. Today, Not For Sale is enabling the organization to dream bigger. In partnership they have created a project to expand the earning potential of musicians and promote social development.
In Stage One, the project will facilitate the formation of musical bands and offer agent promotion for the groups to perform in schools and community groups in the Andes region of Latin America. The musical performances will be tied to teaching other children the dangers of human trafficking and their rights as members of a civil society.
In Stage Two, the most talented musicians will be given the opportunity to tour the rest of Latin America and the United States, both as a form of entertainment as well as an educational event to raise the challenges of the global people trade and steps that will mitigate its threat. Stage Three of the project aims to give musicians access to recording studios so that
they can record their own albums.
For a budget of US$35,000 Not For Sale will be able to deploy Stage One of the project, which will directly benefit 100 child musicians and educate 50,000 school children.
