Below you will find some of the ways in which we are responding to our partners needs in Haiti during the global pandemic.

We need your help to ensure that students, teachers, and staff of our partner programs are able to stay home, care for themselves and their families,
and practice safe social distancing measures.

Food Assistance Program - Nourish Beyond the Soul

This month, we launched a food assistance program to help support families struggling with the increased inflation and rising food prices in Haiti. Each of our 43 partner programs nominated families they felt were most in need of food assistance. Working with Rebo, a national wholesale food distributor, and local vendors, we are organizing kits to be delivered to each of our partner programs containing rice, oil, beans, soap, and information about best practices concerning COVID-19. In our first month we will distribute 430 kits and, with your help, we hope to continue this program through the rest of the summer.

Online Teaching

We have facilitated three avenues of online teaching in Haiti:

1) Using the international teaching network of our board members, we have connected students to musicians around the world for virtual lessons and video feedback. Currently, over 250 students have signed up for this opportunity. We have also consulted with other international organizations to help them set up their own online music teaching programs in Haiti.

2) We have facilitated Haitian-led online instrumental teaching for 90 students.

3) Over 400 students have signed up for online theory classes taught by BLUME Haiti Executive Director Janet Anthony and Cap-Haitian based Cemuchca Institute of Music trumpet professor, Marckengson Étienne.

Instrument Repair Videos

In partnership with MusicFund, an NGO based in Belgium, we are working with expert local Haitian technicians to produce instructional videos about basic instrument repair. Broken instruments are a huge barrier to student progress and with these videos we hope teachers across the country will be able to perform basic repairs - especially while travel is limited. The videos will be available not only in Haiti, but also to MusicFund’s global partners.

Increased Financial Support

Helping the students, teachers, and staff of our partner programs confront the increasing difficulties of daily life, we have expanded our available amount of financial support.