Support the 'Music for Everyone' school

There’s a wonderful little music school just round the corner from where I live when I’m in Luang Prabang. It provides a unique opportunity for Lao kids, who generally can’t afford to buy their own instruments or to have guitar lessons, to get free tuition from top teachers and to experience playing music and performing together, using all the different instruments the school is gradually acquiring.

It's called the ‘Music for Everyone’ school and it's is a great little back-street project that was set up by a local man, Vansay Somboun, (Max) whose two great passions in life happen to be music and teaching! And it works! Since it opened, four years ago, over a thousand local kids have passed through it’s doors and had the fun experience of making music together!

In February 2017, we heard through the grapevine that the school was having problems paying it’s rent for the year. So some of us relatively wealthy foreigners, who were lucky enough to be travelling around and living in that part of the world, rallied round to make sure that the future of the school was not threatened through lack of funds. Friends stepped in and helped the school to survive for another year by paying the $4000 rent. So the Music for Everyone School is alive and well and going strong! ….for now.

That’s how it is, living in South East Asia. It's important to remember that this is a comparatively poor part of the World and that local people; however warm-hearted, creative, talented and intelligent they might be, and however amazing and well organised their projects are; simply don’t have the sort of life opportunities, resources or money that we are fortunate to enjoy, living in Europe, America or Australia.

Anyway; if, like me, you love visiting SE Asia and you love the 'chilled' people who live there, you might like to to do what you can to help this lovely little music school to survive and thrive in the back streets of Luang Prabangl.

2017, here in England, is about me finding ways as an artist and a musician, to help the ‘Music for Everyone’ School survive and thrive. So I'm raising money for them in England and then probably volunteering to help out by teaching when I'm there.

If you'd like to support the 'Music for Everyone' School in Luang Prabang you can contact them directly on their website or, if you prefer, buy one of my drawings, prints or packs of cards and I'll pass the profits from that sale on to them.