'Step Up to Music' program provides severly depressed kids with guitars, lessons. Sentinel & Enterprise - by J.J. Huggins
Pete Cormier has been playing the guitar for 40 years, and he wants to spread his love of music to local kids he feels could use something positive in their lives.
Cormier, 53, of
Sterling, has started a new program to give guitars and guitar lessons to kids dealing with depression.
Getting kids with psychological problems to learn how to play music can help break them out of isolation and build their self esteem, Cormier said.
“Music, to me, builds community,” he said during a recent interview.
“By definition, you can’t keep it enclosed.
You strum a guitar…sooner or later someone pokes their head around the corner.”
Cormier founded a non-profit group called Sterling Music Exchange in 2004.
The group books concerts around the region and gives people of all ages a chance to play in front of an audience.
Cormier and his fellow volunteers are now contacting social service agencies in the Fitchburg-Leominster area about his new project.
He wants to find kids between the ages of 12 and 18 dealing with depression that are interested in learning how to play the guitar.
The program, called “Step Up to Music,” will provide kids with an acoustic guitar and eight lessons.
They will take one lesson per week for eight weeks.
The kids don’t have to pay to participate.
The only thing they have to do is agree to practice and take care of the guitar, Cormier said.
If they do that, they get to keep the guitar after they finish taking the lessons.
“Taking and playing an instrument is tough,” Cormier said.
“They’re expected to treat the instrument with care and they’re also expected to practice.
So there’s a commitment they’re making.”
Cormier is hoping the agencies will want to get involved with the program.
Kids that are interested will have to fill out a one-page application saying why they want to learn to play an instrument, and if they think music is important.
Cormier’s goal is to get at least 20 kids involved this year, he said.
The youngsters don’t have to be in a home, but “they have to be dealing with depression in some phase,” Cormier said.
The point of teaching kids suffering from depression how to play the guitar is to make them feel like they are accomplishing something, let them have some fun and give them a creative outlet.
“We’re just teaching them that the guitar is a way they can express themselves. I find a lot of young-adults – it’s hard for them to express themselves,” Cormier said. Jamming is also “something that can occupy their time in a positive way” and a “coping mechanism that teenagers could use to build self-esteem,” he added. Cormier got the idea for the program about a year ago when the Sterling Music Exchange played a concert for some residents at a group home for kids in
Marlborough, he said. "Two girls came up to me after and said, ‘Hey do you teach guitar lessons? We’d really like to learn,’” he said.
“These kids, you talk to them, they’re normal kids who are just dealing with this debilitating disease."
Two girls from the home, ages 15 and 16, have since gone through the program, and two more are currently taking lessons, Cormier said.
Cormier is waiting to hear back from more agencies around the
Fitchburg are to see if they are interested in getting kids involved.
He is raising the money to pay for the guitars and the lessons from local businesses.
It will cost $240 for each kid who goes through the program, he said.
It costs $100 to pay for the guitar and $140 for eight lessons, he said.
Cormier is a father of three who works as a catastrophe analyst for Liberty Mutual in Westin. He volunteers his time on the side to run Sterling Music Exchange, which he calls his “passion.” People looking to get involved with Step Up to Music can email Cormier at petecormier@comcast.net or call him at (978) 855-8160.
