Music for All Project (MAP): Music lessons for ethnic minority children in HK

Our team wants to provide free musical instrument lessons to underprivileged or economically disadvantage children (age 6-16) in Hong Kong, especially children from ethnic minority families in our metropolis. There are a few major initiatives across the globe already to help more economically disadvantaged children learn and appreciate music, e.g., Music Children Foundation (Hong Kong), The Gift of Music Foundation (USA), Opportunity Music Project (USA), PMA Music Foundation Limited (HK), Addoilmusic (HK), etc., but all of them are either inaccessible to Hong Kong kids or are focused on helping the general population in Hong Kong (i.e., Cantonese or Mandarin speaking kids). We are a group of musically-talented secondary school students in Hong Kong (but would also like to seek volunteers worldwide to help this cause by giving online teaching sessions in the future) who would like to volunteer our time to teach children who cannot afford to pay for musical lessons, especially helping those kids who cannot speak Cantonese or Mandarin!

According to the Hong Kong Government's 2016 Population By-census, "ethnic minorities" (EMs) in Hong Kong has grown at an annual average rate of 3.6% over the past 15 years to reach 580,000 in 2016, almost five times faster than the respective growth in the overall population. In 2016, South Asians (comprising of Indians, Pakistanis and Nepalese) was the largest group of EMs in Hong Kong, with ~76,000 persons (~29% of EM population). Caucasians took the second position, with some 58,000 persons (~22%); Southeast Asians (comprising of Filipinos, Indonesians and Thais) took the third position, with ~37, 000 persons (~14%). In addition, according to the 2014 statistics provided by Government's Commission on Poverty, poverty rate of South Asian families with children is ~31%, which is doubled that of ~15% for overall households in Hong Kong. Therefore, we would like to focus our efforts on bringing musical instrument-learning opportunities to kids from these families who CANNOT afford to pay the learning fees!

Your donation will be used to rent class rooms and instruments to enable our team to teach kids for about 30-45min per week in 2022-2023. Depending on the available fund and the children's interest of learning different instruments, we may offer 1-to-1 lessons or at most 1-to-3(students) lessons.

I have been learning piano since 4 years old and composed my first song since 7 years old. Through your help, my friends and I will devote at least 1 hour per week to teach children piano, trumpet, guitar, violin, etc.