Music

The Recycled Orchestra

Yes- Look close-these instruments above are made of garbage!!

From the slums of Paraguay comes an unlikely orchestra playing instruments made from garbage found on the landfill.

The Recycled Orchestra is a group of teenagers from Cateura — a village of makeshift shacks built on the city’s landfill in Paraguay. More than 25,000 people live by the landfill, picking garbage to find sellable or recyclable goods. But in the middle of the rubble lies hope.

Turning metal drums, oil cans, spoons, copper pipes, wire and bottle caps into cellos, violins, flutes and guitars, the Recycled Orchestra is proof that despite their circumstances, the community has something beautiful to offer.

Global Family Foundation, a Canadian Christian charity working in Paraguay, recently hosted a cross-Canada tour with the Recycled Orchestra to raise funds that will help build a Community Education Centre in Cateura. On May 4th, the Orchestra played to a packed house of more than 1,800 people in conjunction with the MBCI Concert Band at the North Kildonan MB Church in Winnipeg.

Please enjoy a few of the images captured at the event!