42 avenue Georges Mandel
75116 Paris
France
- Arts
- Democracy and community development
- Gender
- International/Cultural relations
- Youth and education
The mission of the Association Elena Rostropovich (AER) is to use music as an educative and a psychosocial tool to build up the self-esteem and promote the well-being of children being living in socially challenging circumstances. AER's music-based programs are designed to meet the specific societal and cultural needs of vulnerable children in such diverse settings as Europe and the Near East.
Since 2010, AER has developed “Al Sununu” project, a choir program for refugee and marginalized Palestinian children in the Near East. Today, the project is implemented in Gaza, Syria and Lebanon, totalizing 19 choirs gathering around 600 children aged from 4 to 15. The main goals of the project are to give basic music education to children and to preserve traditional music as an expression of cultural heritage of the Palestinian community. Each child benefits from 2 lessons of 1h30 per week of singing, music theory and Arab music history and is provided with educational material.
In 2013, AER has created a music room within the Institut National des Jeunes Sourds in Paris. This music room is a unique pilot project offering 230 students in the school the possibility of access to music through vibration, visual sense and any other sensory stimulus to perceive sound other than through hearing.
AER can contribute by sharing with other ALF Network members its 4-years operational field experience in France and in the Near East.
AER and ALF share the same values aiming at the promotion of intercultural Euro-Mediterraean dialogue.
Being member of ALF network will allow AER to extend its own network to other civil society organizations implementing programs in the Near East in order to share their experiences and information for an improved action and mobilisation of resources.