Haven Kids Rock is a music program that was created for at-risk kids in the New York City child welfare and foster care systems. Rock guitarist Jimi K Bones (Joan Jett, Blondie, Monday Night Football and Enrique Iglesias) and casting director Nefertiti Jones (House Casting, VH1, Lilith Fair) founded Haven Kids Rock in 2008 to provide children with a creative/enriching/therapeutic outlet rarely found in their tumultuous lives.

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The program resides at Mott Haven Academy Charter School in the South Bronx, a first-of-its-kind charter school.   The Haven Kids Rock curriculum is designed to first connect to the scholars with the popular music that already excites them, and then broaden their view by exposing them to other genres of music such as; Standards, Classical Arias and Broadway show tunes. The students receive guitar lessons, learn and hone performance techniques, and each semester culminates in live performances that instill the young artists with confidence and pride.

 

Since its inception the children have been featured on the Today Show with Kathie Lee and Hoda, WPIX11, Food Day Street Talk, Fox5, WCBS, NY1, Daily News, Think.MTVcom, Tonic.com, My Fair Wedding with David Tutera, Q 104.3 and in Town and Country Magazine. In January 2014, twenty-one of the children appeared in a New York Lottery commercial singing, “Thank You For Being A Friend.”

Celebrity Signed Guitar

 

In December of 2009, the children performed at Crash Mansion for a benefit concert, hosted my MTV New Correspondent Sway Calloway. $13,000.00 was raised and has been used to provide the children a state of the arts recording studio. Even celebrities like Debbie Harry, Joan Jett, Moby, Brooke Shields, Ace Frehley, Thommy Price, Cyndi Lauper, Little Steven, and Jann Wenner jumped on board by signing a Gibson Guitar, which was then auctioned off on EBay to help raise money for the music program. Billy Joel signed a harmonica for the cause, Cartoonist Steve Marcus, (designer of the Red Hot Chili Pepper animation Tour) designed tee shirts for the kids and Bono signed the cover of a Rolling Stone Magazine.