Recruiting instructors for Musical Mentors Collaborative! MMC is a music education nonprofit that provides free, one-on-one music instruction to students who wouldn’t otherwise have access to private lessons. Founded in 2009 by students at Columbia University, Musical Mentors Collaborative began as a small group of volunteer musicians—both amateurs and aspiring professionals—teaching free private lessons to elementary school students in Morningside Heights. MMC was incorporated as a 501(c)(3) non-profit in 2011, and in the following years, established chapters at NYU, Queens College, Boston University, and Binghamton University. Since 2009, our volunteer instructors have collectively taught nearly 8,000 private lessons to hundreds of students.When COVID-19 pandemic hit, we designed a teaching artist program that pays emergency grant relief to exceptionally accomplished musicians whose careers and income were impacted by the crisis, and deploys them as private music tutors to MMC students. We moved our lessons from classrooms to Zoom, and with the support of companies like Logitech and Blue Mics, invested in quality enhancements to the virtual learning environment. We also expanded our student outreach to include youth homelessness shelters and supportive housing networks, and began offering free instruments to any MMC student who needed one. Today, our collaborative includes musicians, educators, and university students; homelessness shelters, supportive housing networks, and low-income Title I schools. Our volunteers and staff fall in a diverse pool of professions such as law, medicine, social work, finance, technology, and arts administration. MMC's goal is to rally music-lovers across our community, and use that resource to build novel educational infrastructure that serves our next generation of musicians. MMC wants to sincerely invite Columbia students to join us on our adventure and provide PS 145 students with musical lessons! A parent once said "we can not afford $110 per private class, I wish we could...but my daughter had the opportunity to study with one of MMC's mentors last year and she enjoyed the lessons a lot. She loves music and we believe she will benefit from playing the instrument! We really hope that this year, we will be able to make music as well!"You can find more information here via our website. Please don’t hesitate to reach out to Columbia MMC at [email protected] if you have any questions.
