Crescendo Music Project

Crescendo Music Project - it only gets louder! 

The Crescendo Project is a charitable student-led organisation that teaches music to primary school students in the rural areas of Suzhou. Over the past two years, we have provided a total of 46 guitars to two migrant schools — MingXing Migrant School in old town and YouHao Migrant School in Mudu — and have held more than 15 two-hour-long music workshops to more than 50 students on Saturday mornings. The experience has been extremely inspiring for both our student and teacher volunteers, in a unique way each week — the passion of the migrant children stripped from us feelings of trouble or stress, and allowed us to appreciate the valuable opportunities we are given. More importantly, Crescendo gave us the chance to connect with the kids, and to learn more about their lives and family. We became more than their instrumental teachers; we transformed into temporary elder sisters and brothers, to whom they complained about an annoying younger sibling, or busy parents, or bad test grades; and with whom they shared joyful moments to the latest gossip. We realized that as foreigners to this city, all of us share so much in common. Every Saturday morning, we learned to live in the moment. 

Next academic year, students from SSIS will also be joining our project, to bring music into the lives of more migrant children around Suzhou. We hope that this will be the beginning of something larger, of expanding this project outside of the limitations of school walls, collaborating with more international schools, and of getting the whole international community more involved. We thank everyone who has contributed to this organisation and helped us approach our goal: to connect the international and migrant communities through music. To create happiness through music.

It only gets louder!