YAMA program and youths make sweet music for Yakima

Local arts groups are looking at ways to reach younger generations and the Yakima Valley’s Latino community. All sort of entities advocate programs that keep young people engaged in positive activities and out of trouble at vulnerable ages. So it comes with little surprise that an after-school orchestral music program, spearheaded by a dynamic founder, has found support not only in its target neighborhood school but with officials throughout Yakima.

Stephanie Hsu came from the East Coast in 2012 to set up the Yakima Music en Accion program, made possible through a partnership with the Opportunities Industrialization Center, which obtained a state Community Services Block Grant. Patterned after a publicly funded Venezuelan program call El Sistema, YAMA started with 31 grade-school students who committed to staying after school for two hours every school day at Garfield Elementary School, in a Yakima neighborhood that is fairly described as economically challenged.

That’s quite a commitment; not only did those students stick with it, they attracted company. In three years, the program’s enrollment has more than doubled to 66 students from grades 3-8. The program was a key part of Yakima’s presentation in its All-America City bid in 2014.

But it was almost curtains for the program earlier this year when the grant funding ended. The Yakima Symphony Orchestra, which needed little persuasion in recognizing YAMA’s value, stepped in to make the program a YSO subsidiary. The affiliation, which was announced in September, allows YAMA to keep its nonprofit status as it works toward being a free-standing nonprofit, which Hsu hopes to achieve by the end of next year.

The arrangement between the symphony and YAMA offers so many up sides, far beyond the obvious one of giving kids something to do after school. The focus and mental acuity that are required of a music student enhance overall academic achievement. The students learn discipline, responsibility and working in collaboration with others. A YAMA field trip to Central Washington University exposed the students, many from poor Latino families, to a collegiate environment and helped them realize that higher education may be something within their reach.

For its part, YSO gains students who appreciate the orchestral art form. These students will help comprise the symphony’s future patrons — and, perhaps, performers. Many students now attend YSO performances and bring with them their parents and siblings, thus expanding the symphony’s reach into a new audience.

As a result, the entire Yakima community benefits. It’s gratifying to see the community’s commitment to a program that has a three-year record of success.

• Members of the Yakima Herald-Republic editorial board are 
Sharon J. Prill, Bob Crider, Frank Purdy and Karen Troianello.