This week the Massachusetts Cultural Council (MCC) launched the first state initiative in the U.S. to bring music education to underserved youth through programs inspired by El Sistema.

SerHacer (To Make, To Be) will provide pilot grants, musical instruments, and technical support to nine youth music programs across Massachusetts. Led by local schools and social service providers, each program employs teaching and learning models based on El Sistema, which has lifted thousands of poor, disenfranchised children out of poverty through intensive musical training and social support in Venezuela, Argentina, & elsewhere. SerHacer will also fund new research to advance studies that show how making music helps children develop essential executive functioning skills such as focus, planning, and problem-solving.

SerHacer builds off MCC’s 20-year-old YouthReach Initiative, a nationally celebrated program that supports the arts, humanities, and sciences to help at-risk youth create better futures and become more active, engaged contributors to civic life and social justice, said MCC Executive Director Anita Walker.

MCC launched SerHacer at Artists for Humanity’s EpiCenter in South Boston, joined by leaders of Americans for the Arts, the National Guild for Community Arts Education, El Sistema USA, and dozens of other arts and education organizations.

“There are children across the Commonwealth and across the country who have been denied opportunity,” said Walker. “This room is full of individuals and organizations who are working to restore that opportunity—not only through academic support and music training, but by creating space for young people to discover their value, their voice, and their contributions.”

“Kids today need the arts,” said Robert L. Lynch, President and CEO of Americans for the Arts. “They need the arts for better living, better academics and test scores, and for better coping with all of life’s challenges.”

State Senate Majority Leader Stan Rosenberg of Amherst called SerHacer “another innovation for Massachusetts that will help our young people lead more active civic lives and discover their own potential.”

The event also featured the Boston preview of “Crescendo: The Power of Music,” a new documentary about El-Sistema-inspired programs in Philadelphia and New York City directed by Jamie Bernstein, along with powerful performances by students from Springfield SciTech High School and Project STEP, which was recently named one of the nation’s best after-school arts and humanities programs.