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 on more musical instruments soon. This year we were one of the recipients of the Music Drive Us Award.