YOUNG VOICES OF AUSTIN

Young Voices of Austin celebrates the rich diversity of our city by providing a high-quality community-based afterschool program to a racially and socioeconomically diverse population of young people ages 6 to 18. We work to instill a drive not only for musical excellence, but also academic and personal excellence, in all of our students. The three pronged mission of YVA is driven by a commitment to academic achievement regardless of socioeconomic factors. This includes assistance with identifying and applying to colleges, tutoring, guidance on auditions and essay-writing, and SAT/ACT preparation.

Musical instruction includes rigorous sight-singing and ear-training, general music literacy, vocal technique, and stage presence and movement. Choristers learn to analyze scores from many styles and traditions, and to sing texts in many different languages from around the world.

Young Voices of Austin is committed not only to creating stronger musicians but stronger people, empowering the voices of Austin’s youngest citizens so that they may become its future leaders.

In 2016, Young Voices of Austin was founded on pillars of promoting diversity and inclusion. Through fostering musical expression and academic excellence, we believe that we here in Austin can establish ourselves as the forefront of advocating for both values.To that end, in each of the past three program years, in addition to our choral program, we have provided educational enrichment to all of our students. Besides tutoring, we also provide SAT/ACT prep, assistance with scholarship applications, career counseling, financial literacy training and life skills.

To date, all of our seniors have graduated on time with all receiving at least partial college scholarships. Almost all of those are the first in their families to enroll in college.

Our Board and Staff are dedicated to raising scholarship funds annually and are passionate in our belief that no student should be turned away due to inability to pay.
73% on full scholarship in 2019/2020
100% on full scholarship in 2020/2021
100% of Austin applicants accepted
25+ Austin area schools represented

Young Voices of Austin celebrates the rich diversity of the city's youth. By supporting the musical, academic, and personal achievements of our choristers, YVA provides a high-quality, community-based afterschool experience for young people ages 6 to 18.

Young Voices of Austin provides fully funded bus transportation for every chorister who needs it. We see this as the key to bringing together students from all neighborhoods of Austin. It is crucial to the success of our mission. It is also our greatest challenge. It costs over $800 to transport each chorister from school to the program and back again in the evening. In this, our third program year, we provide transportation for 71% of our students, joining us from 25 schools throughout Austin.

In addition, 73% of our choristers are on full or partial scholarships. YVA’s Board and Staff are dedicated to raising scholarship funds each year and are passionate in their belief that no student should be turned away due to their inability to pay.

What have you accomplished so far and what’s next?

We have engaged several dozen community partners that have joined together to provide over 1500 meals and 1700 bottles of Richard’s Rainwater for our students. Austin’s own BookSpring has provided hundreds of books for us to distribute to our families, and the Library of Congress has provided a small lending library for our office. We have partnered with PriceWaterhouseCoopers to provide our students with annual Financial Literacy workshops and have worked with the world-renown Paramount and Stateside Theatre to host our annual concerts. In each of the past three program years, all of our seniors have graduated High School on time with most receiving at least partial college scholarships. Below are few statistics about our program’s recent achievements.

73% percentage of choristers on full or partial scholarship
100% percentage of Austin area applicants accepted into our program
25+ Austin area schools represented through our choristers.
44 Choristers enrolled 2019/2020

Moving forward: Since the COVID-related suspension of our program in March 2020, we have been working closely with our local school districts as well as following guidelines from local and state health officials to ensure that we are adhering to recommended safety protocols. We hope that by developing a hybrid model (remote learning and on-campus instruction) of our program, we can ensure that Young Voices of Austin will continue providing resources and opportunities for our students. We have accepted 40 students into our Fall program and look forward to reimagining and reenvisioning our program to thrive in this post-pandemic world.