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Jeff Fife: It's a great partnership between the Fender Foundation, the Valley Music Academy
and now the Waynesboro Rotary Club, which is sponsoring the music instructors, as well
as buying some amps for the kids. It's a unique partnership to expose arts and music to the
kids in the Waynesboro YMCA Childcare program We've been coming over here for about a month
now with guitars donated by the Fender Foundation. Valley Music Academy has generously opened
up their space. Now Rotary is picking up the cost of the instruction.
It's just another value-added service and exposure for the kids in the YMCA Childcare
program to broaden their horizons and learn something new.
Greg Moody: We're just sort of introducing kids to the guitar. We have a short amount
of time to work. Mainly we're just learning how to hold the guitar, learning some basic
notes. We're working on our first song right now. We're working on the Beethoven song "Ode
to Joy." We've learned the first part of that, so we'll
probably learn a little bit more today. Celicity McLain: My favorite Beethoven song
is "Ode to Joy," so I'm actually really, really glad that we have to do that song.
It's really cool because you get to learn a bunch of songs, and you can learn something
that you've never done before. I've only done the recorder. It's actually really fun.
Nikki Fisher: I think it's really fun to learn guitar. And it's a great opportunity to get
it for free. It's just a really cool instrument, and I
never experienced it before. So I decided to give it a try.
Christian Carter: I mostly like that the song we're learning right now, "Ode to Joy." And
I'm starting to get the hang of it. I just really don't quite get the last part. I think
I'm pretty good at it, but sometimes I mess up in the beginning. But I'm starting to get
better at it. I heard that we might get to get one of the
guitars if we get good at it, and if we pay attention. I'm hoping to get that black one
back there. Jeff Fife: The next phase is not just lessons,
but these kids are going to have the opportunity to take the guitars home with them. Now that
we've got the amps, an opportunity to sort of rent it and go home and practice. And then
a third component is if they start volunteering at the YMCA, and they're practicing on a regular
basis, they can actually own one of these guitars donated by Fender Foundation. So we're
exposing them to a love of music, we're encouraging them to practice more at home, and then we
add a volunteer component. We might have some future guitar heroes behind us!