Empowering Our Musical Youth!

As a fairly new program (2016), we serve approximately 70 youth per year, with plans to build our capacity through fundraising. We hold fifteen (15) four-hour camps during the summer break (May to August). Our monthly web-based teaching activities are year-round. Membership Is FREE OF CHARGE. It provides instruments and equipment, instruction and mentoring, uniforms and costumes, refreshments, and recreational swimming after regularly scheduled assemblies.

Our programming is designed to "heal" the many issues that divide us by providing performing arts instruction, mentoring, youth leadership, job-readiness, and life-skills all in one safe place. We then select public performances at family-friendly culturally-themed festivals and events such as the Juneteenth Heritage Festival, the Greater St. Louis Hispanic Festival, the Ferguson Unity Weekend Festival, the St. Louis Festival of Nations Multicultural event and Backstop-Palooza, a festival which supports the families of First Responders who gave their lives in the line of duty. Our youth get to experience a wealth of culture from these kinds of events, and the attendees get to see how a racially diverse group of youth can utilize teamwork in order to present an exciting performance. Barriers are broken and tensions are lowered because we are all Dragons. Then the "healing" can conquer any negativity, and we can all thrive!

This program functions as a drum & bugle corps but it provides a platform for not only music education but also physical fitness & wellness training which lessens “excessive technology” use. Participation in the program also includes life-skills and job readiness training through sessions on job interviews, accountability, dress-code compliance, teamwork, evaluations, leadership, law enforcement interaction, decision-making, internet safety, and drug abuse awareness.

Our anticipated outcome is to establish a perpetual, multi-generational program, which utilizes music and life-skills in order to continuously enhance the quality of life for young people from all walks of life.

COVID-19 has severely impacted our ability to acquire funding due to large closings of businesses within our community, which we rely upon for donations, sponsorship, and funding. In an effort to provide and maintain the continued level of programming offered to our youth, we are reaching out for your help during this unforeseen pandemic.