Stanford Thompson is on a mission.
He has dedicated himself to making it normal for a parent to say, “I want my kid to carry a violin after school,” every year.
“Most people do not understand the kind of work that goes into learning to play the violin,” he said. He wants it to become more normal for communities to request programs like his in their community centers or in their churches.
Thompson is the Executive Director of Play on Philly, an after-school program based in West Philadelphia. Founded in September of 2011, Thompson describes POP as primarily a classical music and jazz program. Every day, 5 days a week for 40 weeks, 110 kids participate in after school instruction for 3 hours.
“There is a social aspect built into the program. They learn in groups and perform in groups,” he said. “The kids have an opportunity to perform in the best venues throughout the city, and [be] instructed by the best teachers and conductors in the world.”
Philadelphia, Chicago, even Atlanta has seen its fair share of crime in the way of gun violence over the last few weeks.
During Memorial Day weekend, there were reports of several dozen shootings in Chicago. A total of 10 people were killed over the holiday weekend and more than 40 injured in the Midwest City. Chicago has developed quite a reputation for being an unsafe city. A report by the Grio showed that in April, Chicago police recorded a 60 percent spike in murders from January to March of 2012. By May 20, 192 murders were recorded in Chicago, a spike from last year when 126 killings had been recorded by the same time last year.
Philadelphia is no exception. During the same weekend, four people were shot in just 41 minutes, causing a scramble by police investigators. One of the victims, a 20 year old, was shot in the head and killed while riding a bike.
And in Stone Mountain, Ga, just outside of Atlanta, two people were killed and two were injured following the funeral of a 19-year-old on Thursday, June 7. According to news reports, attendees of the funeral were leaving the Victory for the World Church when an altercation broke out and shots were fired. What some consider ironic is that the pastor of the church, Kenneth L Samuel, had preached about the value of life and stopping the kind of violence that took place not long before.
Most of the victims of these instances have been young, African-American and Latino individuals. And all of that has occurred as funding towards education budgets, as well as crime risk programs, are being cut.
With all of this going on around the country, programs like POP are designed to provide an alternative for the young of these cities.
“It is pretty clear we work with at-risk youth in danger of going down the wrong path,” he said, adding that several of his students are in danger of dropping out of school and three are in danger of being in prison before their 19th birthday. “With after-school and pre-K programs being cut and with 54 schools being closed in Philadelphia those statistics will multiply to even more.”
Dantes Rameau, has a similar program and problem in Atlanta.
As Executive Director of the Atlanta Music Project, Rameau said they provide an intense music education program for at-risk youth right in their own neighborhoods.
“We are keeping kids safe after school and off the street by teaching them to play musical instruments,” he said. By learning to play these instruments, Rameau said the young people develop skills they can then apply to their regular lives
“Essentially, learning how to play an instrument well is essentially the practice of problem solving. To get better, you have to constantly listen to the way you play and analyze the way you play. And then figure out a path, action to get better,” he said. “Repetition leads to muscle memory. And then you have to perform. After awhile it becomes normal, you begin to break things down.”
This is the secret to how a music program can really give life skills to kids they work with.
In 2009, the Georgia Department of Justice admitted 2,930 juveniles to its youth development centers – a nice word for jails, said Rameau.
It cost $33,807 to house each child in these youth development centers. Compared to the $33,807, the Atlanta Music Project costs only $2,500 per child a year and they are guaranteed to graduate high school.
“It really is about prevention, that’s the investment,” Rameau said. “We need to be more aware and serious about the cost to sending kids to jail – add all of that up and it’s nearly $99 million. That is a lot of money when $2,500 a year can teach a kid how to play the clarinet.”
Going into their third year, there are no auditions; no prior musical experience requirement to participate in the Atlanta Music Project. And the programs are offered to the kids for free.
“We rehearse two hours every day after school,” he said. “We accept them and make it work.”
POP has an annual budget of about $500,000. Compared to the amount of money spent on the juvenile justice system in Philadelphia, he argues it is cheaper to run POP.
It costs $2 million a year each year to lock up a kid in Philadelphia. There are 200,000 kids in Philly with 70,000 living below the poverty line and 100,000 in trouble.
And another program in Atlanta has now made inner-city youth their target as well. The Museum of Design Atlanta (MODA) is working to raise $10,000 to provide scholarships to for at-risk youths to participate in their 8 week summer program. The first fundraiser is scheduled for Saturday, June 9.
Brenda Galina, executive director of MODA, said a lot of the inner-city kids, who are also home-schooled, are not able to pay the $500 a week for camp.
“So we want to do all we can to provide as many scholarships as possible to make an opportunity for them,” she said. There are three young boys, in particular, that Galina would like to see participate this summer. She believes participating in this program may not only change their lives, it will serve us well, adding that they could very well be our future engineers
“Young people are not getting the push needed in the United States today when it comes to areas of interest like robotics and engineering. Camp MODA is designed to foster those interests,” she said, adding most of the kids who sign up for the 8 week program already have an interest, but they want to enhance the interest already there.
But are these organizations having an impact on the issues of crime and violence in these cities? That is yet to be seen. However, Thompson and Rameau report they are seeing a change in their students. And because of that, both programs are planning to expand into other schools or communities next year.
Organizations like CeaseFire Chicago, as well as the Chicago Public Schools, are working to combat these issues. Calls and emails to their offices were not returned by deadline. However, a spokeswoman for CPS shared a report that shows they are making efforts to “implement strategies that will address issues on the front end —before they lead to more serious misconduct.”
POP’s success is already apparent.
“It has been tremendous,” Thompson said. “The grades are going up and are better than the grades of those students in other academic and sports programs in Philadelphia. POP is everything but just a music program.”
He said kids need to learn the skill of getting good at something, adding that there are programs like theirs all over the all over the country.
Rameau adds, “Eventually we want to be able to say we have a recipe here that seems to be working. There is just something about being in a music ensemble, it is really key. There is something about the team work and putting a bunch of kids together and doing something well together.”
Reports by TheGrio and the Atlanta Journal Constitution contributed to this report.
Follow Mashaun D. Simon on Twitter at @memadosi