Most of what TEACH Rwanda funds is easy to justify in the language of learning outcomes: books, teacher training, classroom furniture. The music programme takes a little more explaining, because its case is not primarily academic, though it has an academic case too.

Music is project-based learning with an audience. It has the same structure as the classroom method the rest of the organisation's work is built on: real materials, real practice, a real outcome that either works in front of other people or doesn't. What it adds is something the rest of the curriculum struggles to offer: a way for a child to be excellent at something that is not measured by an examination.

What the programme actually funds

In practice that means traditional and contemporary instruments for TEACH Rwanda classrooms, and professional teaching rather than an occasional visiting session: a qualified music teacher, on a schedule, not a one-off assembly performance. The programme is run in partnership with Rwanda Rocks and Global Music Box, who bring the musical programme itself to TEACH Rwanda's classrooms and teachers.

For a child who is not, this term, doing well on a written test, that matters more than it might sound. A classroom that only has one axis of success (the exam) only has one way for a child to feel capable. Music, alongside robotics and the project-based classroom generally, is part of a deliberate effort to have more than one axis in the room.

Like the robotics programme and Harmony School's coaching, the music programme is funded entirely by donations, and it scales with what supporters put behind it: more instruments and more teaching hours, not a fixed annual allocation.