It's a Saturday morning and the corridors of the Jockey Club Eduyoung College in Tin Shui Wai echo with the sound of an orchestra warming up. In the second-floor rehearsal room, the initially flat blasts of the brass instruments, and the discordant bowing of the strings, are gradually tuned to the note a violinist plays.
Music teacher Lestrina Ng Wing-chi is delighted at the sound. It's something she thought she might never hear at her school.
'I really wanted to set up an orchestra when I came here, but the school wondered whether students from Tin Shui Wai could afford it,' she says. 'More than half of my students come from families receiving CSSA [welfare] payments.'
But one organisation was in a position to help. Founded in 2009, the Music For Our Young Foundation (MOY) not only helps schools and youth music groups run classes for individual instruments, it also enables them to form orchestras. Two years ago, the charitable foundation began running classes at Eduyoung College.
'Music for Our Young lends the students the more expensive instruments - the brass and wind - but we encourage them to buy the smaller instruments,' says Cynthia Wong Lok-yee, MOY's executive director. 'But if they can't afford to, we also lend those.'
In January, MOY founded a Western music orchestra. Based at Eduyoung College, the ensemble is made up of musicians from three schools in Tin Shui Wai, and one each in Tuen Mun, Yuen Long and Kwun Tong. MOY already had two Chinese orchestras - in Hung Hom and Chai Wan.