NAMM Foundation Awards NSPC $40,000 Grant

The work of the National String Project Consortium (NSPC) has been recognized with a $40,000 grant from The NAMM Foundation.

The grant will allow the National String Project Consortium (NSPC) to continue to start and sustain String Project sites across the United States that both train college students to be effective teachers of tomorrow and also give youth the opportunity to learn a stringed instrument. Annually, The NAMM Foundation allocates $600,000 in funding to support music education programs to advance access, facilitate new initatives and to support the missions of organizations like the NSPC.

“The NSPC continues to advance access to music education, and through their work, they are providing meaningful music making experiences” said Mary Luehrsen, executive director of the NAMM Foundation. “We are honored to support their mission and to help advance the opportunity for all people to enjoy the pleasure of music making.”

The grant funds will allow the NSPC to open a new String Project site at the University of Texas at El Paso (Stephanie Meyers, director) and to offer continued emerging site support to String Projects at Southern Mississippi State University (Michael Miles, director), Northern Kentucky University (Amy Gillingham, director), Pacific University (Dijana Ihas, director), and South Dakota State University (John Brawand, director). Emerging String Project sites are new sites within their first five years of operation. String Project sites provide extremely affordable and accessible string instruction to youth, and grant support within the first five years is necessary in order for the program to operate and later become self sustaining.

“The National String Project Consortium is dedicated to propelling a future of high

quality and effective string teachers coupled with a vibrant community of string players. String Project sites across the nation are uniquely equipped to make a large and threefold impact: they are building into youth, they are building into college students who will become our teachers of tomorrow, and they are building into and enriching our communities,” said Dr. Amy Gillingham, executive director of the National String Project Consortium, who also serves as lecturer of Cello and director of the String Project at Northern Kentucky University. “We are extremely grateful to organizations like NAMM for their generous support of our mission.”