Inaya Merchant, a student in the 10th grade here at Ascend, picked up the violin for the first time 6 years ago, and what followed was years of developing her passion, one she could use to give back to her community. And that’s exactly what she did on the 31st of August, hosting Ascend’s first fundraiser for the NGO Muktangan, in the hopes of affording more violins for students from different backgrounds.

Before all of this, however, Inaya was the first student at the Sound of Soul under her teacher Mika Nishimura. Mika has been teaching the violin at various NGOs in Mumbai for the past 10 years, however one problem she was consistently facing was the lack of available violins.

A few years into Inaya’s violin journey, she began to go with Mika to Muktangan, (an NGO in Mumbai, that strives to provide holistic education to underserved educational communities) assisting, giving help with explaining music theory and eventually being able to teach the violin. “That was truly something unexpected because while I did love the violin, I never imagined I would be in the position to teach it.” Said Inaya. The Sound of Soul began to partner with Muktangan, taking kids who were interested in music from underserved educational communities, and teaching them music at the Sound of Soul. While this was an incredible initiative, Inaya says– “It was tough to properly teach the students music, as we didn’t have the funds for the instruments, and there was only so much theory, before the students wanted to get their hands on instruments.” So, Inaya decided to take matters into her own hands and raise funds to be able to buy enough violins for Muktangan and Sound of Soul. 

“I brainstormed all the ways we could raise money, and I thought what better than what we are good at? Music.” This sparked Inaya’s idea for her fundraiser, which was raising money through concert tickets. Thus began the fundraising concert planning, which took over four and a half months to do with lots of coordination, huge amounts of approval, and putting together musical performances. While the concert to anyone in the audience would have gone smoothly, the behind-the-scenes was much more chaotic with Inaya saying– “Organising was a lot harder than expected.” She goes on to explain why, saying– “I didn’t even realize the things that I needed. I needed a venue, chairs, a sound engineer, permission from the NGO, students willing to perform, ensuring people would come to the concert, sending out tickets, and we also faced tax issues, which was something foreign to me.” Thankfully Ascend was gracious enough to have the fundraiser hosted in the primary school MPH, so stress about the venue was mostly taken off after Inaya had gotten extensive approval, which went on for over a month. 

Amongst all this, there was also putting together the musical performances and motivating the students that they could perform and not get scared, because as Inaya mentioned “some of them were really young, and it was the first time performing for a lot of them”. The turnout from the concert was amazing, with news of the concert being circulated around the Ascend community, and people asking their friends to join, all for a good cause. All this along with the support of Inaya’s classmates and friends, some of which even came to perform– Ali Merchant, Arjun Mehotra, Dhruv Mehotra, Aanyaa Jhaveri and Vir Kaushal. Some of the others helped with more things behind the scenes, like greeting the audience as they entered the concert and handing out flyers. 

The day of the concert was “incredibly nerve-wracking because still so much was left uncertain”. However, even with all this, the audience loved the performances, with Bombay Meri Jaan being a huge hit amongst the crowd, and everyone singing along. “Through the blur of the concert, I remembered just to enjoy myself, because, after all this, it felt like the right thing to do.” At the end of all this, Inaya was able to raise enough funds to buy the number of violins needed for students from the Sound of soul, thanks to months of hard work and planning! Processes like this can teach a lot, with Inaya saying– “I definitely appreciate events that people plan a lot more, and I’ve learned how difficult it is to get people to listen, but also how to get them to listen.” The concert was truly organized perfectly and just showed that by taking an hour from your weekend the impact that it can have. While this concert was the first fundraiser hosted by Ascend, we can’t wait to see more and the different forms they will take on, with Inaya ending the interview by saying– “When it doesn’t feel like everything is going to come together, trust the work you have put in, and it will.”