Click here to watch great video of Geralde Gabeau and Open Access to Music Education for Children, OAMEC, by Sarah Putnam. 

OAMEC (Open Access to Music Education for Children) is a music program designed to engage at risk youth into the world of music, providing students a positive outlet to express themselves. Are students currently study the violin and keyboard instruments.

Our students have performed in various church and community recitals, master classes, gone on field trips to concerts such as the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and we look forward to many other exciting opportunities!

OAMEC started as an intervention to bring at-risk youth together and provide them a mean for self expression using music. The program was kept anonymous for several years, in order to protect the confidentiality of the earlier participants: Most of the families in the initial program were affected by HIV and other chronic diseases. During the past two years, due to the support of the “Lenny Zakim Fund’s and the Klarman Family foundation”, we were able to extend the program to include other children facing various other psycho-social, economic and environmental problems with a focus on low-income families.  With that extension, we are able to serve a larger number of youth and increase our ability to provide for social networking, recreation, mentoring, tutoring and referral to other services.

We chose music because it has been documented that music can have a tremendous impact on children’s lives by increasing their ability to deal with traumatic situations, giving them another means of expression, and promoting their self-esteem.

The program has also attracted several young Haitian musicians and leaders who help teach music and other skills during the summer program.  We currently offer violin and piano lessons and are working on expanding more musical instruments soon.

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• OAMEC Student Application Form