Santa Clara is approaching two events are coming up that will encourage spring cleaning in Santa Clara: the City-Wide Garage Sale at the end of April and the Annual Clean-Up Campaign during the month of May. Residents tidying up their closets might uncover items they haven’t used in years, such as musical instruments. With this thought, Peta Roberts, vice-president of Santa Clara Unified Parents (SCUP), organized Play It Again Santa Clara, a musical instrument donation drive to benefit Santa Clara students.
“SCUP started Play It Again Santa Clara just this year; this is the first year we’ve done a musical instrument donation drive,” Roberts says. “We can take practically any instrument. If students don’t need them, we can sell them and use those proceeds to mend broken instruments. Donated instruments do not have to be in playable condition. We’re interested in practically any instruments, including flutes, trumpets, clarinets, saxophones and any stringed instrument.”
Roberts looks forward to working with the school district to bring the donated instruments into the hands of students.
“The Santa Clara Unified School District recently brought back a musical instrument program to elementary school students starting in the third grade. So this is a way to encourage students to take up an instrument,” Roberts says. “We are planning to give the donated instruments to the Santa Clara Unified School District [and allow the district to decide] how to distribute the instruments to students in need of them.”
Roberts credits her children for inspiring her to start Play It Again Santa Clara. From her involvement in their education, she grasped the challenges and rewards that come from learning and playing an instrument. At Washington Open Elementary School, Roberts assisted the music teacher in her younger daughter’s beginning-level band, while also taking up the clarinet herself.
“Once I started to practice, I understood the difficulties that beginner students who are learning instruments face, such as being able to put the instrument together, read music and blow into the instrument to make sound,” Roberts says. “I have three children. My eldest daughter has been playing the flute since third grade and she’s been in an afterschool band called Deja Vu run by David Anderson, a music teacher with the district. Now she is in high school and she plays the flute, saxophone and the piccolo and she went on a two-week European tour about two years ago with her band.”
Donations of musical instruments to SCUP are tax-deductible. To arrange for a donation, contact Roberts at santaclarapeta@gmail.com or call (408) 394-7989.