Guitars for Bellaire HS students' safe practice

Dear friends and guitar family,

I hope you are safe and healthy and enjoying music today.

At Bellaire High School in Bellaire, Texas (part of the greater Houston area), we are in need of 157 instruments to check out to our incoming students so they can practice and learn guitar in the safety of their homes this school year ('20-'21).

Do you have an old guitar you are not using?  Please contact me, we can get that guitar in the hands of a student!


If you can afford a donation, of any amount, the funds raised here will go to buy a high-quality guitar to be LOANED to a student as they learn, rehearse and do their homework assignments at home.   

I, and my colleagues in the Bellaire HS Guitar Program, Mark Moore and Sean Stone-Ashe, are planning and implementing engaging, thorough and rigorous lesson plans and assessments for all our incoming students through the remote learning model.  We will begin checking out guitars the 3rd week of the semester (late September 2020).  The students will then use these guitars for 8 months of in-depth study from home, and later, bring with them to study at school.

These instrument(s) you help us purchase would then be the permanent property of Bellaire High School (Houston ISD) and would be used in subsequent years by additional students.  One guitar, when treated with care, could easily be used for 8 to 15 years.  Think of all the hours of guitar learning that instrument could provide!

We have an big-hearted vendor partner, Dan Baugh, Jr. of Calido Guitars, Lake Jackson, who can offer us an generous package of a good quality Cordoba classical guitar and padded soft case for $124 each.  He has graciously offered to cover the shipping costs for this campaign.

Edward Grigassy, Keilone Guillory and Mark Moore. Keilone was the first student  from Bellaire HS ever to receive a Gold Medal with "Outstanding Performer" designation at Texas State Solo Contest.

Guitar class is VERY popular at Bellaire HS, as it fulfills the Texas state required  Fine Arts credit for graduation.  Most students enter the program without a guitar at home and only learn by using our classroom guitars each day. 

Each year we have 320 to 450 students enrolled at the beginning of the year.  Assuming a low enrollment this year of 320, we have estimated that 120 of these students already have a workable guitar at home they can use.  That leaves us with a need for 200 guitars to cover all our students.

Thankfully we just received a loan of 35 guitars from Brian Berlin, local guitar teacher.

We're also able to spend some of our activity fund collected last year to purchase 8 more instruments. 

That leaves 157 projected guitar students without instruments as of this writing (8/1/2020).

The Guitar Initiative has agreed to sponsor Bellaire HS in this instrument fundraising campaign.  Guitar Initiative, Inc. is a 501-c3 non-profit organization recognized by the IRS dedicated to promoting guitar education in the Houston area.   The Guitar Initiative has been providing instruments and guitar classroom training to teachers, as well as running the Summer Guitar Conservatory guitar ensemble camp (free for school-age children) since 2014.

Thanks in advance for your contribution to this cause that means so much to me.

(If by chance we raise more funds than requested here, the additional funds will go to provide guitars for practice at home for students at HISD middle school guitar programs.)

More information about this campaign or Guitar Initiative: 

Please visit: Guitar Initiative's website 

Or email us at (email address on our website):   guitar initiative  (at)  gmail  (dot)  com (no spaces).

Or contact me through the GoFundMe portal (or any portal where you can leave comments).

Thank you for considering this fun project dedicated to spreading positive joy through learning beautiful music with students and their families safely in their homes.