Salvation Army primary school gets musical donation

It is not huge, but it will go a long way for the students of the Salvation Army Primary School. The donation of recorders is from a husband and wife team living in Houston, Texas, who are sponsors of the Association for Belizean Artists First. The school received their share of the instruments, which were presented by the association’s president. The students showed their appreciation with special performances and News Five’s Delahnie Bain was on hand for the handing over ceremony.

Delahnie Bain, Reporting
The Association for Belizean Artists First donated sixteen recorders to the Salvation Army Primary School on Tuesday. Its president, Tony Wright, believes that having music classes, should help to keep the students out of trouble.

Tony Wright, President, Association for Belizean Artists First
“One of the main ingredients for Belizean Artists First is to promote and preserve Belizean arts and culture so we thought that this was a good thing to have available for our kids, especially today where our kids seem to be getting distracted so we thought this would be a very great present for them to have to have the mind doing something starting off music-wise.”

Tasha Rowland, Standard Four Teacher, Salvation Army
“Music is important because if you look in today’s world, music is all over the place and not everybody is cut out for an academic skill so music is something that comes in very handy, especially if you’re a lover of fine arts.”

Wright says he hopes their donation will also contribute to the development of more local artists. And according to Standard four teacher at Salvation Army, Tasha Rowland, the instruments will be put to use as early as next week.

Tasha Rowland, Standard Four Teacher, Salvation Army
“The donation has come in very handy because just yesterday we finalized our clubs and music is one of them and we’re having a retired teacher who will be coming in and help us with that.”

Tony Wright
“What we would hope that the kids would do, is a lot of our local music because we have noticed too that Belize has been bombarded by foreign artists and this and that and we have wi own culture, we have wi own artist. We have Brother David, Lord Rhaburn, Mr. Peters, Lela Vernon and all these people so we hope that these kids pick up on that and start to do some more Belizean music and what not and we’ll be happy.”

To achieve that goal, the Association plans to help as many schools as possible with their music programs.

Tony Wright
“We still have some more recorders and any school or teacher or so that is interested in teaching kids music or what, they can send us a letter to the Association for Belizean Artists First and we will look into it and if we think that its viable then we would also be more than willing to donate some recorders to these schools or whatever also.”

The first set of recorders was sent to Toledo District schools. Delahnie Bain for News Five.