ST. AUGUSTINE, Fla. — Rulon International, a company based in St. Augustine, has been making acoustical walls and ceilings for more than 30 years but in 2015 the owners wanted to give back, and started the Guitars for Children program, delivering guitars to hospitalized children, orphanages and even kids with disabilities.
"Although it isn't a highly tuned musical instrument, these children learn how to really play it and adjust that they can do songs with it too," Wayne Robinson, President and CEO of Rulon International said.
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The company sent out its first batch of instruments in 2016 to places like Wolfson Children's Hospital in Jacksonville, Shriners Hospital in Tampa, and eventually all over the world.
So far, more than 5,100 guitars have been gifted to kids who are struggling with health issues.
One of the first places these music makers landed was an orphanage in Haiti, where children decorated them.
"They took [the guitars] from that orphanage, they went to the orphanage a few miles away that was for disabled orphans and the delivered what they had decorated to the other orphanage," Wayne Robinson's wife, Eleanor Robinson, said.
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A lot of the guitars that you see in the manufacturing facility are raw guitars that are going to be sent out for children to decorate but others are decorated by volunteers.
Wayne Robinson said he was inspired knowing how healing music can be for children.
"You see these children grasp that guitar and say, “'It’s my guitar, it’s mine.' It’ just -- it blesses your heart," Robinson said.
With a goal that started out as 10,000 guitars, the program has now grown into one of the company’s greatest passions.