Music in Mission: Exploring Outcomes of a Community Music-Service Learning Project

“Community Music” is being explored in the areas of music education, music therapy, music cultures and related studies. It is multifaceted but what is common among all community music activities worldwide is their primary purpose -the development of a society, community, or the person. Many meaningful initiatives which have used community music in the context of service learning initiated by the universities merit a purposive and deliberate evaluation not only to rationalize their significance but to identify and assess their outcomes which would eventually measure its impact or success. Using the objectives-based evaluation, the outcomes of the community music-service learning (CMSL) project conducted by a group of students of the University of the Philippines, mostly music education majors, were gathered and examined through semi structured interviews, feedback reports, post evaluation questionnaires and multimedia documentation of the community stakeholders. The university students, through a required tertiary course aimed at instilling sense of patriotism and service, known as the Civic Welfare Training Service (CWTS), taught playing guitar and keyboard instruments to the children of “Payatas Dumpsite” which is a huge urban poor community of families dependent on “scavenging of dumpsites to cope with poverty. The community learners were children of 8 to 12 years of age who were beneficiaries of a non-governmental foundation, Payatas Orione Foundation, Inc. (PAOFI) feeding program when they were below 8 years. Results show outcomes which (1)support the intended learning objectives for the community learners and university students ; (2) underline the need for a better venue, more musical instruments to allow and encourage more students to participate (3) emphasize the need for sustainability built on thorough planning for a more enduring and intense learning and (4) highlight the “joy” and sense of fulfillment in the participating children and in their parents. The study hopes to provides a preliminary and exploratory base for program evaluation which aims for sustainability by producing competent musicians in the said community and who in turn would be the teachers of their own community.