See It: The Community being helped

A club for musically talented teen-agers who would like to pursue a career in music.

See It: The Community being helped

Eight high school students and 4 college freshman are traveling to Nicaragua this summer to run a music camp for the children of a poor village called San Jose de Cusmapa. We'll be working with about 150 children ages 7 - 18. In addition to teaching workshops in flute, piano, guitar, voice, theory, drums, bass, violin, and saxophone, we will also bring donated music supplies and workbooks to create a small "music library" at the village school.

Students in the isolated village of Cusmapa can't just go to a music store to buy supplies, (even if there was a store, they wouldn't have the means to buy much), so these resources will be very helpful to the school's small program. The music program has been a HUGE benefit to this community by giving students an incentive to work hard in school and the opportunity to earn scholarships to college through their musical talents, an opportunity previously all but unattainable for students in this poor village. Higher education not only opens doors for the individual student, but for the town they return to serve.

The village San Jose de Cusmapa is one of the poorest villages in the Nicaraguan state of Madriz, which is one of the poorest departments in Nicaragua as a whole. Nicaragua has the 3rd lowest per capita income in the Western Hemisphere ($3,100, fourteen times smaller than that of the U.S.) and one of the most unequal distributions of income in the world. Through our team's fundraising efforts, we hope to education Americans about Nicaraguan culture, the country's current impoverishment, and what can be done to help.

Want to learn more? Check out the website of the Fabretto Foundation, the organization we'll be working with in Nicaragua: www.fabretto.org. For more info about our project, visit our website: http://cusmapamusic.googlepages.com

See It: The Community being helped

Giving musical instruments to orphans in a foreign country is my way of giving hope and showing love to them. Many poverty stricken countries are not able to and do not care for the "abandoned" orphans. Although I am not old enough or trained enough to go overseas and actually start this mission I have already started fundraising. Orphans need our help, and the gift of an education for the future can give them hope.