Recycled Orchestra of Cateura

Children from Asunción, Paraguay who play musical instruments made from scrap materials collected from Asunción’s Cateura landfill / dump.

A music group formed by young people and children who live in the community installed around the Cateura dump, the main and largest dump in Asunción, the capital of Paraguay, as well as some young people from other nearby communities, interested in living the experience of forming this Orchestra.

The Orchestra seeks to educate, through music, children and young people who live in the community of Cateura in conditions of vulnerability and social exclusion, creating opportunities in favour of its members, so that they can have options that allow them to project their future towards better living conditions that allow them to forge a better future.

• Social inclusion,
• Empathy,
• Practical improvisation skills,
• Environmental and humanitarian responsibility
• Responsibility,
• Creativity,
• Self-motivation,
• …

Not available in the case of the “Recycled Orchestra of Cateura”.

However, taking into account the Spanish initiative “La música del reciclaje” (the music of recycling) led by ECOEMBES – the organization that cares for the environment through recycling and the eco-design of packaging in Spain – based on the Recycled Orchestra of Cateura, the project’s training team is composed of qualified professionals with extensive experience in teaching children with special needs.

Instruments used in the orchestra made of all garbage picked up from landfills in Cateura. This area has been carried garbage of 1500 tons daily. When Favio started teaching music to children, it was very difficult to get the real instruments. Because a real violin is more expensive than a house. At one point, he wold come up to make a musical instrument from the garbage. A skilled craftsman just lived in this district. Favio has created a variety of the miraculous musical instruments with him.

• Violin: paint cans, aluminum pot, wooden pallets
• Cello: olive oil cans, tenderizer, wooden pallets
• Saxophone: water pipes, coins, buttons, keys, tops of the beer bottles, cutlery handles
• Drums: wooden pallets, radiograph, angles and pins of metal for windows
• Guitar: wooden pallets, cans for sweets

Children came to be able to learn music with these musical instruments.

In the case of the ECOEMBES initiative the participants of the social project «The Music of Recycling» are children and young people, between 7 and 16 years old, at risk of social exclusion. Currently, three centres and a total of 76 children are participating in the project.

The  training is divided in 2 main sections:

• Musical training: Participants at each center receive five hours of classes per week. Students are selected according to their skills and preferences for the practice and study of a particular musical instrument. In this way they can learn to play the violin, cello, double bass, flute, saxophone, guitar and percussion. In addition, all of them attend solfege classes, given in a practical way.
• Lutherie Workshop: On the other hand, several children actively participate in a lutherie workshop, which consists of 10 hours per month, where they learn to make and repair different instruments that are used by the project’s members, in addition to training as stage technicians.

Taking into consideration some of the experiences replicated in other areas, as it is the Ecoembes initiative “The Music of Recycling” the children attend, two days a week, classes of stringed instruments, wind and percussion. In these classes they learn both musical knowledge (5 hours per week) and how to make their own instruments from recycled materials (10 hours per month).