Addressing AMR through art, childhoods and One Health

2026-05-28

The First Festival of Children’s Ensembles and Orchestras brought together communities, schools, families, and social organizations in Quito through an educational initiative that connects art, the microbial world, and the One Health approach.

Children playing Andean instruments, families gathered together, and melodies evoking mountains, water care, community life, and the connection with nature shaped the atmosphere of the First Festival of Children’s Ensembles and Orchestras: Art, Childhoods and One Health, held on May 9 in Quito, Ecuador. Through music and artistic expression, the initiative offered a sensitive and accessible way to engage with infection prevention and antimicrobial resistance (AMR), while highlighting the deep interconnections between human, animal, and environmental health.

“We did not want to create just a children’s orchestra or merely an instrumental training process. Through music and art, we wanted children to engage with important topics such as health, microorganisms, water, territory, and invisible life. The focus was to recognize children as protagonists, capable of imagining, creating, asking questions, and contributing solutions from their own perspectives,”

says Alexis Zapata, Ecuadorian educator and artist, and coordinator of the initiative.

The project was promoted by ReAct Latin America together with the Oswaldo Lombeyda Educational Unit, the School of Andean Instruments, the Chuquiragua Educational Community, the Niño a Niño Foundation, and several Ecuadorian artistic and community-based organizations.

A Holistic Experience for Health Learning in Latin America

The initiative opens new pathways for community-based education and communication, where children, schools, and families become key actors in building more participatory and sustainable responses to antimicrobial resistance, one of the world’s greatest public health challenges.

Alexis Zapata emphasized that the experience is particularly valuable because it integrates instrument research, the creation of original songs, musical production, pedagogical methodology, and dialogue between art, science, and childhoods. The project also places the palla — an ancestral instrument from Quito with variations throughout the Andean region — at the center of the learning process, using a methodology based on colors and numbers that facilitates learning for children with diverse learning styles.

“It is not simply about learning songs. It is about building an experience where children create, interpret, understand, and contribute from their own sensitivity,”

Zapata noted.

Specialists in community education and collective health agree that art-based pedagogical experiences encourage deeper engagement than approaches focused exclusively on information delivery. Music and artistic creation allow prevention messages to be incorporated through emotion, lived experience, and affective memory, strengthening long-term cultural change.

This educational model also contributes to strengthening social bonds, valuing cultural identities, and recovering ancestral knowledge. In this context, Monica Morocho, coordinator of ReAct Latin America’s Educational Saddlebag, School Health, and Microbial World initiative in Ecuador, explained that the gathering

“opens a path for children and young people to approach the invisible world of microorganisms — that tiny yet essential universe that sustains life.”

Innovation in the holistic approach to antimicrobial resistance

In the coming months, the Guagua Sikuri Book will be published, bringing together musical scores, songs, educational messages, and teaching tools aimed at strengthening learning processes related to health care and community life.

The publication will also include a pedagogical guide for music education from a One Health perspective, encouraging children to share these learnings with their families, schools, and communities.

“Beyond training musicians, these spaces seek to provide children with an experience that helps them grow into whoever they choose to become in the future,”

saya Ana Camila Bedón, teacher and participant in the educational process.

From the perspective of ReAct Latin America, this initiative promotes a different way of approaching the microbial world by recognizing the essential functions microorganisms play in sustaining life. The proposal connects this understanding with everyday practices related to water care, healthy nutrition, and the right of children to grow and develop in healthy environments.

The initiative positions children as agents of change and opens new possibilities for rethinking educational and health policies in more holistic, sensitive, and inclusive ways. At the same time, it demonstrates the transformative potential of art as a tool for promoting health awareness from an early age and for strengthening communities that are more conscious, resilient, and committed to caring for life.