This week the Monterey County chapter of the organization Guitars Not Gunswas named “Non-profit of the Year” by California Senator Bill Monning. The all-volunteer group provides free guitars and weeks of lessons to children and teens to encourage development of positive pastimes. Since 2009, the group has worked with just under 1500 kids in Monterey County cities and towns.
KCBX’s Megan Schellong spoke with chapter president Steve Vagnini to learn more...
KCBX: I’m reading the press release, it says guitar lessons are given with low teacher-student ratios, and if the students complete the full 8 week program, they get to keep the guitar?
VAGNINI: The typical program is the teachers meet with the children for eight weeks, an hour a week, and then at the end we give a little graduation ceremony and they perform a song or two. And for some of the kids, they really take to it and they go to level two, level three. Since our first class back in 2009, we have expanded and developed relationships with at least a dozen nonprofits around Monterey County - the Boys and Girls Club, the Salvation Army, Community Partnership for Youth…we bring programs to other nonprofits organizations that need something…we have a great program at the Steinbeck Library. One of our classes, in Marina, has sort of become a model class, where the students meet for two to three hours every Saturday, pretty much year round, we've got four five six teachers there on any given Saturday, with 20 to 30 students and they keep playing. We've also given the students opportunities to perform. They play every year at the West End Celebration in Sand City, the Good Old Days in Pacific Grove…it's just about building confidence and self-esteem. It's all volunteer. We have no paid staff. The instructors all volunteer their time, so it's a very grassroots organization.
KCBX: What kinds of students enroll in these courses?
VAGNINI: It was designed for foster children and at-risk youth. We feel that all children are at-risk, some of our students are more at-risk than others. We have a class at the Youth Center here in Salinas where the children are incarcerated. These are older kids that have gotten into some sort of severe trouble. We also have classes at the Marina Youth Center and places where the kids haven't gotten into trouble; they may be in middle school and 12, 13 years old, but rather that just hanging out in the street, they're inside playing guitar. So it's for all children, really. And it's usually for children that have never been given the opportunity to learn to play an instrument for one reason or the other whether it was finances or time.
KCBX: What has been the most rewarding part about being the president of this non-profit?
VAGNINI: Well you know, working with the volunteer instructors - it's really the fiber. They're the ones that are spending their time and I really see how a lot of the instructors actually get just as much. if not more, out of the experience than the students do. Some of these instructors are retired individuals and they're sort of - what do you do when you stop working? - and they find something else to do. One of our instructors had been a guitarist many years ago and had stopped playing, and when he retired, he become an instructor and now he is playing in a jazz band and going to workshops himself. So it's really to see how the students grow, but the instructors as well…just that interaction between the students and the teachers has been the most rewarding thing for me. The success of this program, I always say, is the instructors, and we’re always in need of new volunteer instructors. If you're a guitarist and you have some time to spend, and if you like working with with the youth of our community…
Editor's note: Contact the group via the Guitars Not Guns Monterey County website or Facebook page.