Objectives :

To train, educate and employ youths using music as the main focus.

Every youngster regardless of age, colour,religion or background has one thing in common, Music.
We aim to utilise the interest of music to not only create enjoyment but also create employment.
Pa / sound system has many trades attach to them such as carpentry, electrician, electronics, system engineer,research and development, lighting and many more.

Explanation :

The music industry comprises of many different elements. Most youngsters thinks that you need to be a performer to be a success in the music industry. We would like to emphasise that a very large percentage are disappointed when chasing their dreams as a music star. We would like to reinforce that you don’t have to be visual to be successful, you can have a very good career and be financially rewarded in other aspects of the music industry.

As a youth growing up in both Jamaica and England music was the most uniform social activity.

A large number of youngsters wanted to be associated with a sound system, whether listening or being a part of one. From an early age we use to imitate the actions of being a part of a sound system. We use to glue shoe box together, cut out speaker hole in and fit any old speaker we could find, usually from an old radio or tape recorder. We use to hook it up to our stereo and play music through it. We graduated from there and began cutting up pieces of wood and building a speaker box of some kind.

You would hear names of sound systems playing in dances and attach yourself to one even though you were not old enough to go and listen them.
A group of youngsters would get together a few times a week and try to construct the next popular sound system.

Many of the youths would spend most of their free time developing a system rather than walking the street looking for trouble. Often times if there was any confrontation the people concern would string up their systems in one venue and battle it out musically instead of violently.

There was no rules to what the criteria was. Every one had there own idea as how a sound system was made. No attention was paid to ohms, power, box porting, speaker performance etc.

Many of today music stars and radio personalities had their early life shaped by sound system. People like Robert Elms, Jazzy B, David Rodigan, Trevor Nelson, Goldie, Eddie Nestor, Jazzy B, UB40 and many more. A large number of Jamaican artists would not have had a career if it was n’t for sound system.

A sound system as we call it is a amateur pa system which has rules, design and technology.Even though the the youngsters nowadays have a lot more activities, television, gaming, including personal hi fi like mobile phones, iPod and such like we think getting involve with sound / pa system will increase social skills and career pathway.

A pa system is very essential in our daly life. Every church, conference, concert, dance, festival or party require some sort of pa system.

What we at Unity Of Sounds aim to do is to focus on the trades involve in setting up and operating a pa system as a career.

Too often we encourage children to study hard, achieve good grades, go to college and university only to find at the end there is no reward of a job never mind a prosperous career. This can be very deflating considering the huge sacrifice and endeavour made.

There are several people disappointed at the outcome of doing voluntary work or doing manuel jobs after such huge efforts.

As a charity or social enterprise we would like to involve youths as young as eleven years old to develop an interest in a pa system career.

Often times when children are excluded from school there is no programme set for them for at least five days. That gives parents problems as their work commitments get disrupts suddenly. Some of the times students are sent home during the day without the knowledge of the parent, only finding out when they return from work to find their child cannot go to school tomorrow.

We would lease with local schools to send that pupil to Unity Of Sounds for the period of exclusion as an introduction to our programme.
We would like to train youths at the outset in selected trades involve in putting a pa system together and then employ them to run their own pa system as a career.

We will also include maths and English as compulsory in our development. These subjects are a necessary requirement for a successful career whatever path is chosen.

We will do administration training as admin staff is the first contact with any organisation.
We will also need sales personnel to represent our equipment.

We would like to get involve with children before they get caught up in the negative part of society. Children having issues at school which leads to suspension or expulsion we would like to divert their attention to something which may be of interest to them.

After the first six months we will give a public demonstration of their development.

We will get as many people as possible from the music industry to associate themselves with the project as their early influence was through this medium.
We will invite local councils and Mayor to associate themselves with this project.
We would like to duplicate this project country wide eventually.

We have been involved with pa system over a number of years and have acquired a number of equipment which we will use as a starting point for the project.
Over the years we have given children who had been misbehaving at school and at home opportunities to come and see what we do, and during our association it has been said their behaviour had changed dramatically . Because of financial demands we are not able to sustain our programme.

We will research and develop speaker boxes, speakers, amplifiers , preamplifiers and system controllers. We will make these products on site put them together and utilise them in the form of a pa system.
We will fault find and repair equipment.

After the charity / social enterprise develop the youngsters we will create a pa company and employ those who is competent and show aptitude.
We will target council events such as country shows, festivals, carnivals conferences etc.
We will approach record companies, recording studios, churches, promoters and music venues.
We will also advertise to the general public.

We will promote and sell our equipment.
Stage lighting will also be part of our focus, sourced externally.
We will also utilise the premises for hiring to test systems for outside individuals.

We would like an industrial building, isolated from dwellings about 12 / 14 thousand square feet with multiple access.

We have approximately fifty thousand pounds of equipment available to start this project with.

We would like to start with twenty school leavers on the first day. After three days of introduction to the project, they will split into four classes of five teaching different trades. One.teacher per class will be allocated.
All operatives will aim to achieve the minimum of NVQ level. Operatives will also be able to gain further qualifications as they excel in their trades. While studying operatives will gain valuable practical experience in the workshop and demonstration events that we will hold.