Fund Musical Resilience for At-Risk Youth!

Project Report | Aug 1, 2023
GITC Students Attend Recording Camp! Guitars Needed this Fall!

By Jessica Baron | Executive Director

Dasan and Christopher with Peter at StudioWest

Dear Friends,

There's no time like the present to do a little end-of-summer giving to a project in need of support in order to get ready for the new school year. We are preparing to receive over 100 students who are hungry for quality music instruction this fall!

Last year, thanks to you, and to instrument donors, GITC gave out over $12,000 in student guitars to participating students in two urban school districts. This year, the numbers and needs are increasing, and this is great news! Learning to listen, collaborate, share, practice, and perform- all through the endeavor of taking up guitar- are life-shaping skills that can help high school students prepare to meet the real world. We're seeing the changes take place in real time.

Last year we saw kids muster their courage to try something new, and they returned to the GITC after school guitar programs every week. They dedicated themselves to developing the ability of understand and make music. This year we are expected two levels of players at every high school- returning intermediate students, and brand new beginners!

The program has become so popular that it's growing to include a new campus- Hoover High School. Interestingly, Hoover has a partnership this fall with Taylor Guitars! Each students in our fall programs, and all the new ones who join us in the spring, are going to be learning to build their own acoustic guitars courtesy of Taylor. But until their guitars are done, each student needs a guitar on which to learn, and to practice. This is where we come in. Though the school districts are now covering the cost of instruction, they cannot afford to provide the students with their own guitars. It's up to us each of us to make that happen.

This summer, one GITC donor made a special gift so that two of our intermediate guitar students from Morse High School could became the first GITC summer scholarship recipients. They got to attend an intensive week of training in composition, arranging, recording, and sound engineering at Studio West. They worked with teens from other areas of San Diego, and everyone was coached in collaborative groups by outstanding professionals. The two came away with greatly expanded horizons and skill sets- and a gorgeous originial song we look forward to sharing by permission. This is the magic that can happen when a supporter like you votes yes for guitar!

Thanks for being part of an endeavor to make guitar education an accessible part of high school learning, especially where it is needed most. Just $100 covers the cost of an excellent student model nylon stringed instruments, and every donation adds up to instruments placed in students hands.

Looking forward to an inspiring new school year together,

Jess

Links:

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Apr 8, 2023
Your Support is Empowering Real Change for Many!

By Jessica Baron | Executive Director

Intermediate Guitar Students at Morse

Dear Friend,

This project to which you have generously contributed in the past has received a significant update. I am writing to ask you to take a fresh look so you can see the progress your previous generosity has made possible. If you are pleased with the growth of the work and feel you wish to help it continue, this is a great time to stay with the effort. Here is why:

This winter, we have been bowled over by growing student response to this opportunity to learn a new instrument, or to continue learning guitar after a successful first effort in 2022. The project is succeeding for three important reasons.

First, word got out that our teachers are totally "there" for the students, and that our approach is achievable. New student enrollment in the beginning section of the club at three high schools positively exploded in March. For the first three weeks students had to share guitars because we honestly didn't have enough. We didn't see this jump in enrollment coming.

Second, several students who took part in the very first clubs last year, and who are still in high school this year, have re-enrolled this winter. They are excited, passionate, dedicated, and are so grateful to own their own guitars thanks in large part to contributions to this project! Some are composing, some are writing original lyrics, some have taken off with learning more advanced skills through independent study. So we have hired a new instructor for them, Brazilian, classical, and Latin genre guitarist Richard M. to take these high achievers forward.

Third, your donations collectively have helped us fill about 30% of the requests for guitars. This was essential! When we expected 15 students and 72 signed up at Morse HS, it was great problem to have. But an expensive one! We willingly overspent our budget out of necessity because last month, 100 new, playable, nylon string guitars were needed so we didn't have to turn students away.

Thanks to 28 donated protege guitars from Cordoba Guitars and 14 more from the Guitar Center Music Foundation, we have gotten much-needed help filling this immense demand. But even so, we still needed to spend $6000 supplying the rest!

The great news is that in both San Diego and Los Angeles, the school districts now see the point of these programs. The cost of instruction is being covered by district funds for improving student engagement, and expanding student learning. Still, this leaves GITC with the cost of the instruments in order to help these kids find their voices and develop musical skills, focus, discipline, dedication, creativity, and a more promising future. Why? Because the districts can only purchase instruments that belong to and remain at school.

Without you, without us, they cannot practice at home, cannot share the music with their families, cannot have time on their instruments to learn or compose new music. Then, once the club ends, they will have no way to keep going.

These students must see a future for themselves with their own guitar in order to invest their time, energy, effort, and talent. But they come from such immensely humble means that buying their own guitar is simply out of reach. Just having food to eat and a bed to sleep in is a challenge for many. Receiving medical care or supplies can be out of reach. Affording community college will be a reach.

It takes positivity, promise, grit, and resilience to rise above such challenges. Making music helps. When you help a student own their own guitar, this inspires in each one a feeling of hope, pride, and a sense of mattering, belonging, feeling trusted, believed in, and worthy. It's a very big deal.

Please stay with us, and if you can find it in your heart to donate, please give again. You are the guitar heroes for youth at promise. Your care will help them strive for excellence, and encourage them to discover and tap their potential in this world.

Thank you so much for your care and support of these students, I know they will make you proud!

Jess

Links:

New Documentary on GITC in Elementary Classrooms

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Dec 12, 2022
Thanks for Supporting Student Recovery Thru Music!

By Jessica Baron | Executive Director

Dan Decker with Students After School

As schools complete their fall semester, at-risk older youth in Los Angeles and San Diego are building hope and connection by making music together, in person, and they are truly learning to be excellent musicians, and to play guitar. We are proud of these teens as well as their inspiring GITC teachers.

Our program leaders in San Diego, Dan Decker, and in Los Angeles, Christopher Clarke, are pouring their hearts and expertise into the students in these classes. We are thrilled that things are going so well that the administrators at each school have given a green light to continuing all school year long! In addition to reaching teens in economically vulnerable communitiies, we have also added a new 4-day-per-week restorative guitar program for younger teens at Millennial Tech Middle School in the southeaster region of San Diego. Taught by the amazing Mr. Decker, this class started as an experiment and is growing in popularity and attendance weekly.

We are very fortunate this year to have support for the instrument provision for these programs from both the Reverb Foundation and the Guitar Center Foundation! Students have received excellent guitars which they will keep at the point of graduation, as well as soft, padded gig bags to keep the guitars safe, donated by TKL Cases. The latest support just arrived from the top guitar education websites in the U.S., JamPlay.com and Truefire.com. These two platforms offer guitar instruction taught be outstanding teachers and luminary musicians, online, 24/7, and the company has just donated one year memberships to all of our students who are showing passion for the instrument! So much care from the music products and music foundation side of what we do is helping these students realize how important they are to others. What a blessing everyone has been!

Thank you for helping Guitars in the Classroom seed and develop this program! Your gifts have been put to important use supporting resilience, creativity, musicality, and hope in students who needed and wanted a chance to learn. Our new faculty members in both districts are teaching with GITC in person this fall and are very inspired by the students’ enthusiasm!

We hope you love this work and will continue to support our efforts to make this work more widely available in 2023. Your kindness will inspire so many students during this critical turnaround year in their lives.

Looking forward to teaming up with you to help all of these deserving teens make it to high school graduation this year with the power of music to carry them forward as they launch into young adulthood.

Thank you from the bottom of our hearts,

Jess and Gail

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