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Yamaha Releases a Documentary of the I'm a HERO ProgramFrom March 31st to September 30th, Yamaha (News - Alert) Corporation ran the I'm a HERO Program for children in the Republic of Colombia (hereinafter, "Colombia"). In order to help children discover within themselves the strength to face invisible barriers in their lives, this program exposes children to the joy of performing music, and also to significant challenges. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20181128005279/en/ With an instrument in hand, you become a hero. (Photo: Business Wire) After a huge effort, 26 children from the slums of Medellin, Colombia performed the Colombian national anthem in front of a huge crowd at a soccer stadium, their big stage. Yamaha will release a documentary about their story. Through their interaction with music, these children start to find out changes within themselves. It is a story of small heroes who overcame adversity.
Throughout the world, children face invisible barriers that limit their futures-inequality and poverty, as well as discrimination, prejudice, and other disadvantages that these problems cause. The I'm a HERO Program encourages children to take center stage in overcoming these invisible barriers, to support them to become a hero, an icon of fighting against and overcoming adversity, through a significant challenge, to perform in a big stage. 26 children who participated in this program were from the ages of 7 to 13, most of them living in a slum area within Medellin, Colombia, where crimes happen every day.* * Please see "The reasons we chose Colombia as the stage - Latin America and their social music actions" for more details The beginning of this program centered around a brand new instrument, Venova, for children with little or no experience playing an instrument before. They put their best effort to learn how to play the Colombian national anthem with this reed instrument which delivers the feel of a conventional wind instrument and easy fingering as that of a recorder. However, their hard work for over half a year was not easy. In the slum area, you have to face the physical challenges to get to cities and practice every day. With kindness and sometimes strict support from their families, they finally faced the big day. Sunday, September 30th. A match of the Colombian Premier Football League. After a video showing "journey", the names of 26 heroes were called and entered the football field with the players of Atlético Nacional football club, in front of a huge crowd. Football is extremely popular in Colombia. Atlético Nacional, especially, is a strong Medellín-based club that has won the Colombian national league championship 16 times. Children are particularly awestruck by the players of Atlético Nacional. After the performance, their faces were held high, looking straight forward with pride. Through interaction with music for the past six months, children felt that something has changed within themselves. They overcame the invisible barrier and became a hero. Yamaha will continue to believe in the power of music and face social challenges in various ways through our activities. Comments from people involved
The reasons we chose Colombia as the stage - Latin America and their social music actions Currently, in Latin America, where Colombia is also located, there is a movement to counter social problems such as delinquency and poverty with the power of music, and Yamaha has been supporting this movement. In Venezuela, there is a government-backed music education project called El Sistema (News - Alert). Implemented as a national strategy to prevent delinquency and eradicate poverty, El Sistema aims to promote society-wide stability by engaging children in musical activities and securing future employment opportunities for them. Yamaha supports these efforts, and for the last 15 years has contributed by promoting instrument maintenance techniques and training instrument repair technicians. In Colombia, youth orchestras and bands were launched in Medellín (Red de Escuelas de Música de Medellín) and Bogotá (Fundación Nacional Batuta), for example. Yamaha also played a hand in the creation of a scholarship program called ToKANDO, which is run by Fundación Incolmotos Yamaha, a major partner of ours in Latin America. 26 children participated in the I'm a HERO Program were mainly from ToKANDO living in the slum area. New challenges have also appeared proceeding with these activities. There was a lack of awareness of the importance of and methods used for instrument maintenance, exacerbated by the fact that there are few people who are able to repair broken instruments. To address this problem, we launched the AMIGO Project in 2014, offering workshops to enable people to maintain instruments on their own, and promoting the training of technicians who can repair broken instruments.
View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20181128005279/en/ |