Amigo Project

Supporting the Activities of Orchestras and Bands to Encourage Youth Development

Providing Support through Music in a Way That Is Unique to Yamaha

In the countries of Latin America, crime, poverty, and social inequality have become serious social problems. Children raised in these environments are often dragged into the world of crime, delinquency, and violence. In order to prevent this from happening and foster a healthy mental attitude among youth, the governments of these countries are promoting free music education activities, with public and private institutions forming orchestras and bands in various regions. The Yamaha Group endorses these kinds of activities and has been providing support for them over many years. In fiscal 2015, we commenced the AMIGO^* Project in an effort to continue to provide unique support through music education that helps a greater number of children lead healthy lives.

• AMIGO is an acronym for Apoyo (support), Music, Institute/Government, and Orchestra

Following the development in orchestra and band activities that encourage youth development, there has been an influx of musical instruments from manufacturers around the world, leading to rapid growth in musical instrument markets. However, daily maintenance is often not performed on these instruments due to lack of proper maintenance knowledge and a shortage of repair technicians. This has brought about a situation where instruments cannot be repaired when they break, resulting in an increase of instruments in poor condition within youth orchestras and bands. In some instances, the activities of these organizations have come to a halt because of the dwindling number of usable instruments.

To ensure that musical instruments can be used in good condition for many years, there is a need to train technicians that perform daily maintenance on musical instruments and repair them when they break. By holding maintenance workshops and seminars for training technicians, we are focusing our efforts on spreading proper maintenance knowledge and cultivating technicians who can perform repairs.

Holding Maintenance Workshops

Our staff members from local subsidiaries and dealers hold workshops for instructors of youth orchestra and band organizations. At the workshops, these staff members use maintenance guidebooks created by Yamaha to teach local instructors methods for instrument maintenance. These instructors then pass on these methods to the children they teach. Having instructors teach these methods enables us to efficiently pass on instrument maintenance know-how to an even larger number of children. For children, learning how to handle and maintain musical instruments on a daily basis helps extend the lifespan of their instruments and fosters a mindset of treating these instruments with care.

Supporting the Cultivation of Repair Technicians

In Latin American countries, there is a shortage of technicians who have proper knowledge on musical instrument maintenance and can perform repairs. We therefore have been working to establish a system in Latin America for the cultivation of technicians to ensure that children can enjoy music in an even better environment and to improve music culture in the region.

For the training of repair technicians, we gather together employees selected from our local subsidiaries and dealers who will become key repair technicians in their respective countries. These future technicians then participate in seminars where they gain repair know-how and learn repair techniques. These key technicians then use manuals explaining the knowledge, techniques, and repair methods that they have learned through these seminars in order to train other local technician candidates in their respective countries. Through this cultivation system, not only do we train highly skilled repair technicians, we also create local employment opportunities.

Meanwhile, as a more dramatic measure to address the issue of technician shortages, we are actively pursuing the development of musical instruments that are extremely durable and easy to maintain.

Going forward, we will continue to support youth development, thereby conveying the joy of music to an even greater number of people and contributing to the development of music culture in the region.