Welcome to our contributors page!
FRIENDS, we have recently done extensive research and have learned that the best practice for non-profits these days has changed. Before hacking and scamming, charities like ours listed their contributors regularly on websites. But times have changed.
NOW, out of respect for your privacy and a desire to protect you from receiving unwanted solicitations, we are refraining from listing individual names here. But please know how deeply we value and appreciate you and all you give!
RATHER THAN A LIST, we will feature a new story each month at this page about a special contributor who has made a significant difference for others- students, teachers, schools- through their gifts to our charity.
With their permission we will tell their story!
Will your story be next? Want to be interviewed? We would LOVE to hear from you!
we are seeking renewed permission from each individual before we share about their help.
To get started, please read about Janis Beth Ost, GITC's first very committed charitable individual donor.
She earned the title of Guitar Fairy back in the early days and continues to support GITC today.
Janis began supporting Guitars in the Classroom in 2000.
Janis first discovered a fledgling GITC pilot program when she was a teacher and resource specialist working in Title 1 schools in Santa Cruz, California. She came to Guitars in the Classroom during our early pilot program in 1999, hoping to learn to play guitar and sing well. Making music quickly became a pursuit and a journey to which she fully committed herself. Progressing from the normal challenges of strumming, singing and changing chords all at the same time to eventually writing, performing and recording her own original music and favorite songs by others, Janis has gone the distance with music! If you get lucky, you might even catch her performing at a local music gathering in Santa Cruz.
GITC showed up at the right moment in Janis's life. She had been taking lessons for 6 months when she experienced the sudden and life-altering loss of most of her nuclear family in the tragic Alaska Airlines Flight 261 plane crash in 2000. This devastating turn of events made recovery very hard. But Janis is an indomitable person. She mourned with her whole heart and found she could take comfort and solace in quietly making music. Singing and playing songs that she and her late brother Bobby loved brought her closer to him. Making music brought the spirit of her mom, also a musician, into her home. The loved ones she had lost were most with her through music. She found her way through the pain and music was a good tool. Now it is so much more than that. Today Janis writes and performs her original songs along with those chestnuts in public in Santa Cruz. Her voice is strong, her playing is heartfelt and solid. And she continues to serve students in need. We are proud to call her an enduring friend and a Children's Champion, our highest honor.
Truly, Janis is a marvel, a role model. Her resilience and strength as well as her commitment to helping children in need through GITC as well as through her work with CASA reveal the beauty of her heart. Always, always, she has shared her appreciation to our work making such learning possible for teachers. Because of her gifts, GITC has been able to run programs in districts from Southern to Northern California and from coastal communities eastward. We are forever grateful to Janis Ost for her sustaining care.
You can learn more about our friend Janis by reading the book she wrote about healing from the loss of her family, The Long Nights of Mourning and enjoy her delightful creation, a recipe of her own invention called School House Chai!
GITC showed up at the right moment in Janis's life. She had been taking lessons for 6 months when she experienced the sudden and life-altering loss of most of her nuclear family in the tragic Alaska Airlines Flight 261 plane crash in 2000. This devastating turn of events made recovery very hard. But Janis is an indomitable person. She mourned with her whole heart and found she could take comfort and solace in quietly making music. Singing and playing songs that she and her late brother Bobby loved brought her closer to him. Making music brought the spirit of her mom, also a musician, into her home. The loved ones she had lost were most with her through music. She found her way through the pain and music was a good tool. Now it is so much more than that. Today Janis writes and performs her original songs along with those chestnuts in public in Santa Cruz. Her voice is strong, her playing is heartfelt and solid. And she continues to serve students in need. We are proud to call her an enduring friend and a Children's Champion, our highest honor.
Truly, Janis is a marvel, a role model. Her resilience and strength as well as her commitment to helping children in need through GITC as well as through her work with CASA reveal the beauty of her heart. Always, always, she has shared her appreciation to our work making such learning possible for teachers. Because of her gifts, GITC has been able to run programs in districts from Southern to Northern California and from coastal communities eastward. We are forever grateful to Janis Ost for her sustaining care.
You can learn more about our friend Janis by reading the book she wrote about healing from the loss of her family, The Long Nights of Mourning and enjoy her delightful creation, a recipe of her own invention called School House Chai!