Established in 2010, Strings for Hope has dedicated the past decade to making a positive impact on the local Nashville community. Their unique approach involves repurposing second hand musical strings to provide second chances for survivors of addiction, domestic violence, and sex trafficking. By employing survivors in their program, Strings for Hope not only offers them a supplemental income but also equips them with valuable job skills during their transition. The makers at Strings for Hope come directly from transitional housing facilities, and the majority of their strings are generously donated by musicians and music stores across Nashville.

Thanks to their dedicated efforts, Strings for Hope has been able to provide full time employment to six individuals who have successfully completed their Work Development Program. Their ongoing goal is to expand their team and employ more women who have successfully transitioned out of the program.

The products created by Strings for Hope truly embody the spirit of Nashville: kind, creative, and deeply connected to music. They take immense pride in giving back to the Nashville community and transforming the lives of survivors within their city.

FX Pedal Planet Online Store is honored to support Strings for Hope by offering musicians the opportunity to donate their used instrument strings for recycling into beautiful jewelry. This can be done by either sending the strings to FX Pedal Planet Online Store or directly to Strings for Hope.

In an interview, we had the chance to catch up with Strings for Hope and learn more about their incredible work and the profound impact it has on the lives of others.

Creating jewelry from used guitar and bass strings is such a great idea.  How did it all start?

The original founder's husband built guitars and she hated to throw all the guitar strings away that were not needed, so she decided to get crafty with them.  She started selling her creations and giving money back to local food banks and schools.  She saw a demand and decided to go into a local addiction rehab center and contract those women to hand make the jewelry as a form of art therapy and supplemental income.

From there, it really grew and the current CEO took over in 2017.  She was one of the first Sales Representatives back in 2015 and loved what Strings for Hope was doing.  Since 2017 the whole focus has been on the women in the recovery facilities and advancing their empowerment.

It is such a great cause, providing second chances for survivors of addiction, domestic violence, and sex trafficking.  What do Strings For Hope offer new employees within the program?

Strings for Hope has a year long work development program where we partner with residential recovery facilities and employ women who are in their initial steps of recovery.  For the first six months of the program our full time instructor physically goes to these women once a week and provides all the tools, guitar strings, and instruction of what to do.  They primarily do prep work, which includes measuring, cutting, and shaping.  The second six months, if these women are able to find transportation, we offer them part time work at our in house production office where they learn more skill sets such as soldering, dremeling, cleaning/coating, assembling, and much more.

After they graduate from the year long work development program, if we are hiring for permanent positions, we can bring them on permanently for part time or full time work or we help them find another job.  They are directly employed through us, so they are making money whether the jewelry sells or not, receiving a fair hourly wage.  100% of the sales are going directly back into the company to continue employing women in recovery.

A lot of women who are in their initial steps of recovery have a difficult time maintaining a job due to many factors such as lack of transportation, childcare, triggering (setting, people, etc), lack of skills and a hard time obtaining a job due to their past record.  Many reasons why Strings for Hope saw a gap and decided to fill it.

What is an average week like in the Strings For Hope workshop?  Also, do you all listen to music whilst working and what is the types of music listened to?

We have a lot of fun!  We currently have three in house makers, all of whom came through our program, and a team of five other ladies separate from the makers in the residential facilities.  Our Program Director meets with the makers once a week for a two hour time slot.  Before that, her schedule is filled with prepping for those classes by sorting heaps of guitar strings by colour and size.

She also has to flatten many of those strings to get it to the desired look we want.  The makers who are in house are busy creating many of our top sellers.  We solder certain pieces and we also still use wire wrap.  We have a lot of fun sharing stories and cranking up the music.  Lately we have been jamming to The Spice Girls, NSYNC, Carrie Underwood, Maroon 5.  A lot of 2000's music.

We also pop up and sell around Nashville.  We do not have a store front, so we have to partner with boutiques to set up, go to big events, and we also work with corporate events to sell our product. We spend a lot of time prepping for those with displays, packaging, etc.  Our sales team stay busy!

We have our weekly team meetings on Tuesday's and are just busy filling online orders, planning for months to come, and being attacked by guitar strings.  We joke that we forget we are a jewelry company because we spend a lot of our time managing all the string donations that come in and trying not to be poked or scratched.  It has a mind of its own when you are bending, flattening, soldering, and manipulating it the way we do.

Strings For Hope have a 'Give Back' initiative.  Please tell us about this, who the recipients are and how does it work?

We have specific pieces that we give 20% back to local partnered non profits.  On our website, you can go to the Support tab and then click Giveback to see those set styles.  A lot of non profits are trying to raise money for their mission and build awareness.  So,one way we like to help is by creating a unique piece for them and every sale that is brought in 20% goes straight back to them for their cause.  Not only are the sales providing income for the ladies making them, but also us by spreading the love helping other non profits in our area. 

If someone wishes to donate their strings, is there a condition they should be in?  I mean, strings can get pretty worn.  So, is there a limit to what can be achieved with some strings?  Are there some strings that literally have 'No Hope'?

Great questions!  We take all strings in all conditions.  Our goal, on top of providing jobs for women in need, is to keep all guitar strings out of the land fill.  Whatever we don't use we send it to a scrap yard and they melt it down and reuse it.  With a lot of our styles, we can use as small as just an inch of the string.  We also use the ball ends of the string and add them to our jewelry.  We do not use nylon strings though, just ones made of metal.  They also go through a heavy cleaning process before selling them.

We can even take your personal strings, make jewelry out of them, sell them back to you which becomes a very special gift.

Guitar and bass strings are made from lots of different materials and coatings.  Is there certain strings that create better jewellry?

There aren't strings that create better jewelry, just different styles and different difficulties when working with different types.  We have learned so much about working with strings.  With them being made of mixed metals we have had to do a lot of trial and error on top of research when it comes to soldering them.

We now plate a lot of our pieces in Gold because the strings made of copper and bronze do turn over time.  Also, with there being nickel in most of them we do have to tell our customers about that.  When we started to plate them, we ran into an issue mainly with the bass strings because there is a coating between each layer of wire wrap and when they were being plated the coating would ooze out so we had to come up with a solution to dissolve all of that before plating.  We love coming up with different styles depending on the string.  So many new ideas on the drawing board, we have just been so busy we haven't had time to design and launch them.

Where can musicians donate strings?

You can donate them to:

Strings For Hope

100 Taylor Street C12

Nashville TN 37208

United States of America

Also, tell your local music shop to collect strings too instead of throwing them in the bin.

What does the future hold for Strings For Hope, i.e. plans, aspirations and aims?

Our goal is to get a storefront in Nashville so we can expand our brand.  We also hope to hire more women in recovery through more partnerships with more recovery facilities.  In order to do that we need more sales.  More sales equals more money that directly goes back into the company to keep these women paid and to ultimately hire more.

Lastly, does anyone in the Strings For Hope team play guitar, bass or other musical instruments?

Crazy enough, no one in our in house team does.  Also, most of the women in the facilities we employ do not.  They might have dabbled in it, but we haven't really had anyone who played enough to know much about guitar strings.  Being in a town where music and musicians are EVERYWHERE it's crazy that none of us play.  We do know A LOT about guitar strings though!

We extend our heartfelt appreciation to Devon Rideout for spearheading this initiative. At FX Pedal Planet Online Store, we are proud to announce our support for Strings For Hope by offering a convenient service to ship your used musical instrument strings directly to them. If you would like to participate, kindly reach out to Steve at npd@fxpedalplanet.co.uk, and he will provide you with the necessary postal address to send your strings. We will ensure that your donation reaches Strings For Hope on your behalf. In addition, Steve himself has pledged to donate his own strings for recycling into jewelry. Alternatively, you have the option to post your strings directly to Strings For Hope.

For more detailed information about Strings For Hope and the incredible work they do, we encourage you to visit their website, www.stringsforhope.com.

« Back to blog

Image Gallery