The moment of creation is explosive! It is mind-blowing for a child to touch a button and make a sound, and then to have the ability to express the sounds they have within empowers them beyond their imagining. Children over 10 easily learned the Garage Band program and within a few days they were creating their own songs. Then to see their songs on the Internet and know others could hear them was overwhelming for them. They were suddenly a part of the world; they mattered. This drove them to seek out the computer and their peers to create more powerful pieces. We know that given the opportunity to create with children on an international scale, these children will have greater confidence and brighter futures.

Through this project we’ve seen such clear evidence of the transformative power of providing these tools for expression: a child who was acting violently toward other children and was to be sent to a children’s prison began creating tracks and to this day has never set hand to another child; children in Iraq whose parents had been killed in front of them awaited us with giant grins and open arms each day as we returned to their studio, so thrilled with the possibility of making music; the children of Puerto Rico cried alongside their teachers while watching the video that we all had created, knowing they were being heard so far away. As a result of this experience, HearME is dedicated to bringing the power of sharing music to orphans around the world.