We would like to :
- finish the music school expansion to accommodate more children.
- Offer a scholarship to youths who want to continue music studies at university.
- Continue to train our luthiers to repair instruments.
- Hire teachers for instruments not being taught at the school yet.
- Help La Escuela de Iniciación Musical Santa Cecilia become autonomous little by little!
We would like to :
- Continue to send voluntary luthiers on missions to other towns on the island, like Matanzas, Santiago de Cuba where there are many schools that don’t have access to luthiers workshops.
- Send wind instrument repairers on missions to schools in Havana and the provinces.
- Associate this action with young instrument repairers who are at the end of their training in France so that they can share their competences over there.
- Identify the material needs and try to fill these needs by providing instruments, cords and accessories collected from luthiers, manufacturers or other associations.
- Set up partnerships with professional orchestras in Europe to recover used cords.
EXPAND THE MUSIC SCHOOL
Since 2018, with the help of partners such as LE DON DU CHOEUR and LA FONDATION AIR FRANCE:
- 6 new classrooms were built, the workshop joining the wind instrument repairs and string instruments still has to be redeveloped,
- the installation of rainwater recovery tanks to compensate for the absence of running water is in progress,
- the building of a dozen individual study room cubicles is planned for 2024,
- the construction of an exterior palisade has still to be financed.
DEVELOP OUR TWO INSTRUMENT REPAIR WORKSHOPS
It was essential to ensure the continuity of the instrument collection by creating a repair workshop within the school. Patricia Garcia Garcia studied for a year in France at the ITEMM (2014/2015). She is responsible for the wind instruments.
Elia Ignacio Flores, with the help of Luthiers Sans Frontières (Luthiers Without Borders), trained in Belgium for bowed string instruments (2017/2018). She is now responsible for the luthier workshop.
Their individual competencies are now reunited in one ‘atelier’ available to the students of the school. The repair service is also open to musicians outside the school. This activity is a source of income that contributes to the workshop’s self-financing.
TO GIVE ALL CHILDREN WHO EXPRESS THE DESIRE, THE CHANCE TO STUDY MUSIC
To attend music classes, the parents who can afford to pay 60 pesos per week (around 3€), thus guaranteeing the school a certain autonomy (small equipment, electricity, part of the teachers salary). Scholarships are offered to the more needy families so that no child who wants to learn is deprived of music.
Scholarships for those wishing to go further
Certain students from the Santa Cecilia school like to pursue their musical studies at a conservatory or at university. We encourage them by giving them a scholarship. In 2023, eight scholarship students are studying higher level music courses, seven of whom are at l’Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM).
