Elfenworks Foundation
In Harmony With Music Sanctuary Project
The Elfenworks Foundation is pleased to be lending our support to Music Sanctuary Project, which provides guitar and piano lessons to youth detained by Homeland Security while awaiting deportation or asylum, housed at a detention facility near Walnut Creek, California.
About Music Sanctuary Project
Music Sanctuary Project was established in 2006, when it was learned that a teenager at the detention facility had always wanted to learn guitar. He was grieving the recent suicide of his mother, and feared deportation to Central America where he fled his father's severe physical and emotional abuse, pressure of gang involvement, and extreme poverty. Realizing that learning to play guitar could mean a great deal for this youth, volunteers from Legal Services for Children raised the funds and recruited the teachers to start the program. Not long afterwards, MSP joined with the national non-profit group Guitars Not Guns which provides guitars and lessons to many at-risk youth including those in foster care.
Many of MSP's students were taken into custody by U.S. Homeland Security at the border or airport and sent to detention centers around the country. They may have fled violence and abuse in their home countries, or been the victims of human trafficking (child slavery). These youth sometimes stay at U.S. facilities for a year or more during their removal or asylum proceedings.
During the first year of lessons MSP provided a total of 490 music lessons to 55 youth from China, India, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, Honduras, and Ecuador. Each year the program is able to support more youth with the gift of music and a means of positive self-expression, and to provide a a small positive experience of kindness in a critical formative moment of their troubled young lives.
We are working with MSP to develop a more robust web presence and promotional materials. We've quickly worked up an interim awareness-raising brochure which guitarist Josh Workman is distributing at his concerts. If you would like to join us in our efforts (perhaps by distributing brochures) please get in touch with us via our contact page. If you would like to contact MSP, please visit www.musicsanctuaryproject.org.
