Miami Music Project uses music as an instrument for social transformation, empowering children to acquire values and achieve their full potential, positively affecting their society through the study and performance of music. Our motto: Composing Better Lives.InspirationMiami Music Project is inspired by one of the most exciting initiatives in educational reform today which hails from Venezuela, where in 1974 economist and professional musician Jose Antonio Abreu launched El Sistema, a free program in classical music for young children from highly impoverished backgrounds. Since then, El Sistema has led to improvements in the social conditions of millions of children worldwide becoming a new model for social change through music and a visionary global movement that transforms the lives of children and the communities in which they live.VisionMiami Music Project seeks to serve the greater good of society and to help children develop into successful, healthy adults whose lives make a positive contribution to community and to society as a whole. Our tuition-free, intensive after-school program has a fully integrated music curriculum, which builds the transferable practical and social skills needed to improve academic motivation and classroom success. Designed as an after-school music program in Miami-Dade County, it provides hundreds of children from at-risk demographics with excellent training from professional musicians and music educators. Children are provided musical instruments free of charge. The program creates new avenues of cultural awareness in the city's most vulnerable communities. Ultimately, by enriching the lives of individual children and creating a network of stand‐alone orchestras in Greater Miami's most underserved communities, Miami Music Project seeks to create social change within the communities served.