Starting The School Year With a YES

A new school year comes with fresh notebooks, new schedules, new teachers, and, if you’re Kevin, a new goal: becoming the guitarist in your school jazz band.

Kevin is a student at Don Lugo High School, where Guitar Club Advisor David Robinson has had a front-row seat to his musical ambition.

A couple of years ago, Kevin lost his father, and his family experienced significant changes in the aftermath. But when David reached out to Free Guitars 4 Kids, he didn’t simply tell us what Kevin had been through. He told us where Kevin wanted to go.

“Kevin’s goal is to become the jazz band guitarist for our school jazz band,” he wrote.

That was something we could get behind.

So, with a new school year ahead, FG4K was able to put a guitar in Kevin’s hands—and give him another tool to pursue that goal.

Kevin took it from there.

“I am so incredibly grateful for the new guitar, and it has completely changed everything for me. The whiskey brown color on it is literally beautiful, and the second I first picked it up it felt just right. I never actually loved playing music more than I do right now and all of the songs that I am learning sound absolutely wonderful on it! I want to practice for hours at a time, and I'm really excited to see how much better I will get! Thank you, FG4K!”

There’s a lot packed into those words.

Excitement. Ownership. Motivation. And, maybe most importantly, a desire to keep getting better.

That’s why we believe a guitar can be a start line, not a finish line.

The instrument matters, but so does what comes next: the teacher who keeps encouraging, the hours spent practicing, the first song that finally clicks, the confidence to audition, and the community waiting when a student decides they want to be part of something.

As students across the country head back to school, there are more Kevins out there. Kids with something they want to learn, something they want to become, and teachers and mentors who see that possibility in them.

We want to be ready when they ask.

Because sometimes starting the school year the right way begins with something pretty simple:

“Yes. We can help.”