Howard Middle School student Briana Vasquez’s Saturdays are filled with music. The 14-year-old eighth grader is one of 450 students in Orange County participating in A Gift For Music (AGFM), a subsidiary of the nonprofit organization A Gift For Teaching, which pairs string instruments with underserved children. “The idea is that once the kids can play proficiently, we can open up the world of music and let them see beyond their backyard,” said AGFM director Eric Smith.

Diagnosed with a learning disability, Briana struggled academically until she started playing the violin with A Gift For Music. Now she’s part of her school’s engineering program and has earned her way onto the honor roll. Briana’s mom, Lindsay Castro, has seen her daughter’s confidence grow and attributes the change to her participation with the music organization.

“She tells me daily that she wants to go to Juilliard (the famed music school in NYC),” Castro said. “This has changed her life.” Besides excelling with the violin, Briana has also picked up the guitar and piano and has fully embraced her artistic talents. “I’m shy and don’t speak a lot but, when I play, the words just come out of me,” Briana explained. “I definitely want to do this professionally!”

A Gift For Music started in 1999 with 25 violins at two elementary schools as a way to reach out to low-income students unable to afford music lessons. “We taught them very rudimentary notes,” Smith recalled. “By the end of the year, they could play ‘Twinkle, Twinkle’ or something like that.” Now, AGFM offers a complete curriculum that serves hundreds of students with an inventory of 700 instruments. The organization boasts 8,000 alumni and has expanded to include six elementary schools, two after-school programs, and a Saturday orchestra. The organization is now considering expanding its instrument offerings to include the cello and the viola. “The underlying mission has not changed at all,” Smith said. “We’ve just gotten better at it.”

Focusing on children in the poorest areas of Orange County, the organization offers free music lessons for students starting in third grade. The program is so popular that it relies on a lottery system to fill vacancies. “We have a limited number of slots, usually about 15 or 20 students with two instructors,” Smith said. “That is really the biggest limiting factor.” Once selected, students begin with a violin suited to their size. “When learning the violin, the skills are very transferable to other string instruments like the viola and cello,” Smith said.

Once students reach the fifth grade, they are invited to join the Saturday orchestra if the child’s school lacks an orchestra or the child’s family cannot afford him/her to join one. “Ninety percent of our students in the orchestra started playing an instrument with A Gift For Music,” Smith said. “It’s sort of a continuation.” Smith noted that 20 different public schools are represented in the orchestra and most students make lifelong friends through the experience due to the number of hours spent playing together.

A Gift For Music has made an impression not just locally but internationally as well. A partnership with the University of Central Florida allows the organization a rent-free space to meet. The organization was a finalist for the 2014 National Arts and Humanities Youth Program Awards presented by President Barrack Obama’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities. That prestige put A Gift For Music in touch with the SoundPost Youth Foundation in Silicon Valley, California, a nonprofit which promotes youth development. That partnership led to AGFM working on a piece called “Rainy Days” and creating a video for SoundPost’s Conserve Water! video contest. In May, students in the orchestra video-conferenced with Japanese composer Yukiko Nishimura about songs they were practicing for their annual spring concert.

For Smith, who professionally plays violin in a string quartet, the endeavor is not just about introducing students to music. It’s about opening up their minds to the infinite possibilities the future can hold. “We teach critical thinking skills,” he said. “Scales are just a pattern and students learn to recognize patterns elsewhere.” That includes in their academics. Every AGFM student in the last two graduating classes went on to major in math or science in college, including Jennifer Nguyen who will take pre-med courses at UCF this fall. “I have a strong belief that kids who play music are good at math and science,” Nguyen said. “Music teaches you to think in a different way.” Born into a family of guitarists and pianists, Nguyen called AGFM “a family that helped me grow as a person.” She played violin with the organization for nine years.

A Gift For Music is seeking financial contributions, volunteers, and donated instruments of all sizes. To learn how you can help children in our community make music, visit AGiftForTeaching.org.