Free music tutoring across 31 nations and 94 schools

"The kid sitting in the corner." That is how Iris Cao describes her younger self. "For years, I saw myself as that kid, voice stuck between Chinese and English, hands aching from piano playing I’d long lost passion for."

Switching to flute, she says, changed everything. It was an instrument she chose herself, and marching band rehearsals and playing at the National Flute Association Flute Choir gave her, in her words, "a newfound drive to improve". She also met aspiring musicians held back by financial and time constraints. "That's why I founded ECHO Music Empowerment, a youth-led initiative to democratize musical passions for underserved youth."

“Music is a universal language accessible to everyone, regardless of ethnicity, ability, or background. I'm glad I can unite communities with this common love for education.”

Iris Cao

Since 2024, ECHO has grown to span 31 nations and 94 schools. It has provided 1.3K+ hours of free online tutoring and its reach is now 500K+.

"Beyond the numbers, it's the stories that stuck with me the most," she says. At a music camp she was hosting, she met a fourth-grade violinist slumped in the corner while the other kids were laughing over rhythm bingo. The girl was holding a plastic recorder. She told Iris she had quit because her family could not afford it and she did not want to be a burden. "In her, I saw the past me so close to giving up." Iris took out her own plastic recorder and asked her to play Hot Cross Buns with the group. "A chorus of screeches erupted." Afterwards she handed the girl a flyer for ECHO's free tutoring, and the girl has now been taking free lessons for four months.

Iris is a student at Novi High School. She has also built an app, Advoline, a civic space for youth advocates, and building it took her to the Diamond Challenge Semifinals. The courage to launch it, she says, came from one of her own ECHO piano students, who picked up music at 16 with no experience before. "The worst that could happen is experience."

What the violinist's smile showed her, she says, is that "one hour can save one sound otherwise lost to silence".

Iris is also the sole high school winner of the National Flute Association’s Frances Blaisdell Scholarship, a $1,500 award for young flutists.