Visiting the music schools

Children's schools that we visited and brought donations to. 

School of Music

This high school is only about studying music. They awake at 6am and go to bed at 9pm. All they study is music; singing, reading music, history, playing different instruments. Even though it is a government run school, we still gave them donations of instruments, music stands, guitar strings. They were amazing. 

Director at the music high school

Clave Del Sol, Orquesta de Guiterra 

This is a children’s guitar group from ages 6 and up. They are not government run and must rely on donations of others and money earned from performances. They started 2009 with 9 kids, now they have 305. Anyone can join, they just need their own guitar and the want to make music. They received letters from Bertschi’s 2nd grade class along with donations of instruments and guitar strings from our group. 

Awesome group of kids that performed for us!

This young singer / dancer had such bravado!

Outside of the school. About the size of a mobile home.

La Cominita, meaning little beehive

This program was another favorite on the trip. This is in the heart of Havana, and takes in children up to 15. These children work hard to sing and dance on stage and are able to tour in other counties.  The children here must demonstrate the core values of humanity, creativity and forgiveness, not only in their work, but in their day-to-day lives, in order to remain members of the troupe. These kids were so wonderful. We saw the performance, then they had an extra special performance for us and had us up and dancing in the aisle with the kids. Everyone was smiles.

This girl asked me to dance in the aisles