2023 Annual Report: Accompany with Music

Introduction

The Accompany with Music Program originated from LY Foundation's concern for the psychological health of rural left-behind children. Due to the lack of parental care and education, left-behind children face severe emotional deprivation and behavioral problems. Based on the collaborative relationship between Shanghai and Yunnan province, we chose to carry out our work in Nanjian County, Dali City. The project site, Songlin Elementary School in Bixi Township, is a boarding school where over half of the students are left-behind children. Due to its remote location, children lack opportunities for growth and face mental health issues due to the lack of family companionship.

In early 2023, LY Foundation and the Yunnan Lianxin Community Public Welfare Foundation (referred to as "Lianxin") jointly launched the Accompany with Music Program. With Xixin Social Work Service Center in Nanjian County (referred to as "Xixin") as the implementing partner, we aim to promote the physical and emotional well-being of the children at Songlin Elementary School through a combination of aesthetic education, group education, and companionship. Using this combined methodm, we hope to exemplify a new intervention pathway to address the psychological health issues of left-behind children.

In this article, we are honored to present an annual review of the program. We look forward to hearing everyone's thoughts and suggestions on its future directions.

What did we do?

In order to enhance the self-confidence and self-identity of left-behind children in the project area, reduce their sense of loneliness and helplessness, promote their interpersonal communication and environmental adaptation, and help them establish better teacher-student and peer relationships, the program carried out the following series of actions:

【Aesthetic Education (Music)】He Weicheng, a certified Inheritor of Intangible Cultural Heritage, was hired as a "music accompanist" to teach the children traditional musical instruments, songs and dances of the Yi people. LY Foundation funded and built a brand new music classroom in the school and purchased 198 musical instruments for use in music classes. Teacher He led the children to conduct a participatory music class with a total of 150 hours over the course of two semesters, using traditional musical instruments to perform a piece "Sounds of the Pine Forest" that included elements of singing and dancing.

【Group Education 60 students from Songlin Primary School formed a small band. The teachers organized weekly rehearsals as well as two public performances. During the summer vacation in 2023, 115 students from the program held a ten-day "Dream-Building Growth Camp", and the small band performed the finale performance during the Yi Torch Festival celebrations.

【Companionship】Local social workers conducted home visits for children in need. During the music classes, social workers surveyed and documented the children's mental health and family economic conditions, and teamed up with school teachers to visit the families of children in difficulty and distribute scholarships and daily necessities. During the project period, a total of 60 rounds of home visits were conducted, covering 10 households.

In addition to the intervention measures above, LY Foundation also cooperated with Yunnan musicians to raise funds for children at the Wubaili Music Festival. The project was launched on the Douyin charity platform and received a total of 39,596.8 yuan in public donations. During the summer camp, team volunteers applied for and used the mental health literacy courses developed by the Guangdong Rici Charity Foundation, and received positive feedback from Songlin Primary School. LY Foundation also linked up with the Shanghai Pudong New Area Enpai Charity Foundation's Love and Tongxin Special Fund, and coordinated with other donors to give funds and goods that worthed a total of 200,000 yuan.

What was the outcome?

The most important outcome from the Accompany with Music program was the impact it had on the children.

At the program output level, all children in Songlin Primary School participated in music classes and received a total of 150 hours of music teaching. A total of 5,047 children have received social worker services, 1 dropout child has returned to school, 20 children in need have received scholarships totaling 17,400 yuan, and 2 children without household registration have been established and settled.

In order to comprehensively understand students' musical literacy and teaching environment, identify the possible implementation effects of the project, and provide evidence-based basis and iterative direction for the future feasibility of the project, LY Foundation invited the Center for Experimental Economics in Education of Shaanxi Normal University as the first The tripartite team evaluated the implementation effect of the music companionship plan. During this period, through questionnaire interviews and comparisons with 218 students from Songlin Primary School (as the intervention group) and 528 students from Huilongshan Primary School (as the control group), 20 students and orchestra members were randomly selected from grades 3 to 6 of Songlin Primary School to conduct a semi-structured Interview. Based on the above data, the evaluation team used the propensity score matching method to identify the impact of the music companionship program. Please refer to the evaluation report (in Chinese) for details.

The evaluation found that the project has achieved the following results:

• The proportion of students who like music increased by 35%, the proportion of students with specific musical interests has increased by 19%, and the proportion of students who expressed willingness to engage in music-related careers in the future has increased by 24%.
• Students' emotional regulation and thinking abilities improved by 0.53 points (total score of 5 points), the number of friends made increased by 0.38 points (total score of 5 points), and loneliness decreased by 0.52 points (total score of 5 points)

At the same time, the evaluation also exposed the following shortcomings:

• Students reported a shortage of music equipment and insufficient opportunities to use instruments outside the classroom.
• Cooperation between the project team and front-line teachers in schools was limited and no synergy was produced.
• The children who received home visits from social workers only accounted for 4.6% of the total number of intervention groups, and the contribution of home visits to children's mental health was not significant.

We also heard from the following voices directly from the volunteers and the children:

"I give the music class 100 points because I feel that I have gained a lot from taking the music class. In other places, you have to spend money to learn Jiudian and cucurbit flute. Teacher He will also tell some stories from daily life to make us happy. Study The musical instrument may go to a big city to perform, and then you can see the outside world." - Songlin Elementary School student

"I am honored to participate in this growth camp activity. As a volunteer, I am deeply immersed in the joyful faces of the children. Watching them go from being a little reserved at the beginning to taking the initiative to communicate and care for the volunteers, I know that the love between us and the children goes in both directions and is meaningful. All I can do is give him as much love and help as possible during this short-term growth camp, and constantly guide him to pay more attention to what he has. There are too many similar situations. Every time I see these children, I can't help but feel sorry for them. Because I have been caught in the rain, I want to hold an umbrella for them. I deeply hope that they can grow up bravely! "——Summer camp volunteer

Our reflections

Since December 2023, we have conducted a month-long internal review of the program. We consulted the evaluation by the Shaanxi Normal University team and listened to feedback on the project from many domestic and overseas philanthropic colleagues. The following is our overall review of the project——

Pluses

• 【Innovative Intervention Method】The combination of music aesthetic education and intangible cultural heritage has produced a good chemical reaction. The children exhibited high enthusiasm for music courses. The evaluation report shows that music teaching can significantly improve the mental health of participants and has long-term practical value.
• 【Cultural Confidence】Music teaching that incorporates intangible cultural heritage elements is more likely to be accepted by children. By learning the cultural background and playing skills of their own indigenous musical instruments, the children were able to deepen their understanding of their ethnic culture and improve their self-confidence and pride.
• 【Positive Feedback on Summer Camp】Through a diversified curriculum and the support volunteers, the summer camp brought a wealth of holiday activities to the children. It cultivated team awareness and enhanced the relationships among the children.

Minuses

• 【Poor Fundraising Results】The public fundraising activities of Wubaili Music Festival did not achieve breakeven. It reflected the program team's lack of experience in fundraising planning. Considering that LY Foundation's work focus is not on content production and dissemination, we will consider leaving the local execution team to handle fundraising in the future.
• 【Limited Outcome from Individual Case Service】For families in extreme poverty, case services such as social workers' home visits and the issuance of small grants are difficult to improve the structural problems of income.
• 【Low Scalability】Evaluation shows that current program outcomes are highly dependent on the quality of the music curriculum and the overall literacy of intangible cultural heritage bearers. If the music class is converted into a regular classroom teaching model, it is difficult to guarantee that the overall intervention effect of the project will hold up to the same level, and it needs to be gradually verified through relevant pilot work.

Next steps

2023 is the debut of the Accompany with Music program. As the first project initiated by LY Foundation, the results of the project are inseparable from local charity partners such as Lianxin and Xixin, and other social organizations such as Enpai.

After discussions by the board of directors at the end of 2023, we decided to continue funding the Accompany with Music Program project team from 2024 onward. We will make the following in the progam design and execution:

• The overall funding will be converted to non-restricted funding to provide local teams with space for independent exploration and innovation and trial and error.
• The team will most actively communicate with the school to provide small orchestras and choirs with more opportunities to rehearse and enrich extracurricular activities with themes related to aesthetic education.
• The team will network more broadly with social organizations that work on rural education and the mental health of left-behind children, and gather more resources for primary and secondary schools in Nanjian County.
• The team will track the long-term effectiveness of the project, complete the project post-test and intervention effectiveness evaluation in 2025, and explore large-scale implementation paths.

Thank you again for your support of LY Foundation, thank you for your time to learn about our Yunnan project.