If you're anything like me, when you make a donation, you want to know where your dollar goes and stretch its value to the fullest. This story has all the elements I love: hard work; music; a young person with a dream; the possibility to really impact a life.

• We first met Ana at a summer music program in Quebec, where she was studying on scholarship.
  Knowing the program was fairly elite and by audition only, it was a shock to learn she had only been playing the cello for five years! 
  
• Ana started through a non profit arts program that came to her small village in Mexico.
  Academia de Arte "Dra Ma Leticia Salazar de Barrera" is an El Sistema based music and art program sponsored by a businessman in their region. Ana was in her last year of eligibility at age 13 when the program came to her village. She was drawn immediately to the cello, however, the only teacher was a violinist! Ana took cello lessons with the violin teacher for two years, until she was able to find a cello teacher. Unfortunately this coincided with the COVID pandemic, but did not stop Ana from taking online lessons for the next year. As pandemic restrictions drew to a close, Ana found a teacher with whom she could have in person lessons; he lived "only" three hours away! Since 2022, Ana has made this weekly drive for her lessons. 
• Music is life. 🎵
  Ana realized immediately that music was what she wanted to do with her life. To that end, she decided to accelerate her high school education through online learning, and she completed all of high school in one year, earning the highest mark for her class and graduating when she was only 16. This enabled her to dedicate more time to music. Her dream has been to attend university in Canada and she has worked tirelessly towards this goal. Ana's dream has started to become reality, as she has recently been accepted with a scholarship to Brandon University!
• Let's get Ana to Canada! ✈️
  Before the pandemic, Ana's parents had a poncho shop, but it closed during Covid and now exists as an online shop. They do not have resources to help Ana much with her schooling, although they are hugely supportive of her musical journey. Ana and her family travel to a tourist town each weekend, a four hour round trip journey. There they perform traditional music in restaurants and venues, earning some income in this way as well. During the week she teaches English classes that she created herself. She has worked for her municipality, travelling around to schools and presenting talks on music and playing the cello for the children. She is creative and extremely hard working and has been saving diligently for her schooling, but when you realize that an average daily wage in Mexico is $14 USD, you'll also realize this does not go far in Canada. We would like to help Ana by raising money for her travel to university this fall.