A total of 130 musical instruments donated by jazz.fm91 listeners have found a new home with the Africentric Alternative School in North York.
The delivery last week wrapped up the 10th year of jazz.fm91’s award-winning Holiday Heroes Instrument Drive, operated in partnership with Long & McQuade and FedEx Canada.
The Africentric Alternative School began operating in 2009 in response to a community request to address a high dropout rate and achievement gap affecting students of African descent. Since then, the school has expanded to enrol students from kindergarten to Grade 8 and currently serves 95 students.
“The Africentric Alternative School community would like to express appreciation to jazz.fm91, its listeners and donors for their generous donations and support of the Holidays Heroes initiative,” said the school’s principal, Hugh Reynolds. “We are overwhelmed by your generosity and can assure you that the instruments received will help to establish our music lab and provide the opportunity for our scholars to obtain access to a variety of instruments and enhance our music program. We are hoping that this donation will positively impact the academic performance, assist in developing social skills, and provide an outlet for creativity that is crucial to our scholars’ development.”
The 130 instruments donated to Africentre included guitars, keyboards, brass, woodwinds, drums and more. Plus, we were also able to donate 18 ukuleles to Doane Uschool, a registered charitable organization dedicated to music education, founded and operated by Juno-winning musician Melanie Doane.
In total, this year’s Holiday Heroes program collected 148 instruments.
We would like to thank Long & McQuade, FedEx Canada and everyone who who donated their used instruments for their help in making this year’s program a success.
