Throughout history artists have known that music provides benefits for both the creator and the listener. It can affect individuals in positive ways by inducing both psychological and physiological healing. This is especially true in the senior community. 

 

Sing For Your Seniors is a nonprofit built around the mission of enriching lives through the universal language of music. They bring professional artists to the communities of seniors in need...to entertain them, to foster inter-generational connection, and most especially to create shared joy.

 

Jackie Vanderbeck is the Founder and Producing Artistic Director of SFYS. From her great grandmother, whom she lovingly called grandma Dee Dee, she realized the enormous therapeutic value of music for seniors, especially those who are showing signs of withdrawal. And so in Grandma Dee Dee’s honor and memory she started SFYS in 2005 as a one-person a cappella hour at the Village Adult Day Center in New York’s West Village. But it has now grown into a much bigger organization, and today Jackie joins me in this Spotlight episode to talk about that journey. 

 

Last summer, she invited me to participate in one of their sessions at the Actors Fund Home in New Jersey. So we also talk about that experience and how SFYS brings hope and joy to a very vulnerable group that is often forgotten by our society.

 

Discussed in today's episode:

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Contribute your own Audition Story: contact.winmipodcast.com

 

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For insights and unreleased audio clips of today's interview, you can be a part of the WINMI community on Twitter and Instagram and you can always reach out to me directly: [email protected]

 

Lastly, this podcast is supported through kind donations of listeners like you: buy me a coffee.

 

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Music used in this episode:

 

"Reverie (small theme)" (ft. Pitx), 2010 by _ghost.

Licensed to the public under http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

 

"Stardust" by U.S. Army Blues is licensed under a Public Domain Mark 1.0 License.

 

"Stompin At The Lough" by The Underscore Orkestra is licensed under a Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

 

"In Your Arms" by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).

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