music creates   music enhances  music provides   music heals
Mission

Feel the Music! brings music and inspiration to underserved children, adults and families, building artistic skills and the self-confidence needed for creative self-expression. We believe everyone deserves access to the joys of music and music education.

A 501c3 non-profit organization, Feel the Music! offers hands-on music/arts workshops, after-school programs, concerts, individual and group music lessons, recording opportunities, public outreach music/arts events, training for teaching artists and arts retreats.

Who Do We Serve?
The populations we serve are diverse yet unified by an interest in learning music yet, for a variety of reasons, have little access to musical experience and music education.

We serve: 1) Children and families impacted by trauma (9/11 families, WTC responders and their families, international teens who lost a family member to terrorism); 2) Students in NYC public schools without an in-school music program; 3) Seniors who are members of the Lenox Hill Senior Center; 4) Children with a chronically ill sibling at the Sibs Place program and 5) Teens in the NYC Safe Space program. We are currently developing partnerships in order to serve veterans and their families.

Feel the Music! was founded in 2005, in the aftermath of September 11th. Originally known as 'World Foundation for Music and Healing', we started "Feel the Music!" to serve 9/11 families, survivors, witnesses and those directly impacted by the ongoing WTC recovery efforts. Over the years we grew to partner with schools in Lower Manhattan and Chinatown, a hospital-based program in Long Island, and Project Common Bond, which serves teens from around the world impacted by terrorism.

In 2009, WFMH became Feel the Music!. The name change reflects the growth in our mission to bring music to more diverse populations, to be able to reach those without crucial access to music and the arts. To this effect in 2009 we began serving Seniors at the Lenox Hill Senior Center and teens in the Safe Space program in Queens.

Vision

Feel the Music! bases its programming on the following concepts:

* Music is a language which can communicate with anyone, anywhere, throughout the world.

* Music speaks to all regardless of age, language, culture, race, gender or physical ability.

* Everyone has the capacity for music-making; everyone can "Feel" the Music!.

* Participation in music and the arts improve one's quality of life.

In our long-term vision, we seek to expand our programs to a global network, working with partners to support cross-cultural student exchanges of music and the arts. We plan to offer cross-cultural performances, conferences and seminars in the coming years.

Feel the Music! also plans to research and become a resource for information on culturally traditional and innovative methods of healing through music and the arts.

We see ourselves as belonging to a collaborative global community of international artists, thinkers and students, bringing together the multi-disciplines of music, creative expression and healing. We seek to weave together these paradigms in order to better understand how participation in music and the arts can restore and revitalize.

To fulfill our vision, Feel the Music! utilizes three components:

Education

• develop, support and offer music and arts programs for children, teens and adults
• sponsor international student exchanges, seminars, conferences and performances
• bring together musicians, artists, music teachers, music organizations, psychologists, music therapists, doctors, scientists, music/arts advocates, arts programs for children and music-healing techniques from around the world to share ideas and develop creative and innovative programs

Performances

• produce and present concert events and recordings

Research

• research traditional and innovative music-healing methods from around the world to better understand the relationship between music, creative self-expression and healing

History

World Foundation for Music and Healing was founded by New York musician/singer-songwriter Valerie Ghent in response to the evolving needs of children and families affected by September 11th. A few weeks after 9/11 Valerie became one of the many volunteers at World Trade Center site. While distributing much needed, specific supplies with WTC Ground Zero Relief, Valerie organized benefit concerts with members of the FDNY, PAPD, NYPD and WTC volunteers. These sold-out 9/11 concerts evolved into the acclaimed benefit CD "we'll carry on"; a book of poetry and lyrics titled "word"; an ongoing concert series and, most importantly, planted the first seeds of what would become Feel the Music!.

Valerie knew Feel the Music! could work, and knew she needed the right partners. Founder/director of both The Songwriter's Beat and West Street Records, Val called on her over twenty years' experience in the music industry working with luminaries such as Ashford & Simpson, Dr. Maya Angelou, Nina Simone and Deborah Harry. Val then rallied partners Arturo O'Farrill and percussionist Bashiri Johnson to join Feel the Music!, and contacted the NYU Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis, a highly respected advanced training program which Valerie's father, Emmanuel Ghent, co-founded in the 1960's. Simultaneously, Valerie conferred with the September 11th Families' Association and Tuesday's Children, a nonprofit dedicated to children affected by 9/11. A member of The Children's Music Network, a national nonprofit dedicated to celebrating the positive power of music in children's lives, Valerie was able to consult with children's music composers and educators. The final key was when Friendship Ambassadors Foundation, a nonprofit affiliated with the United Nations, offered to become fiscal sponsor for WFMH.

In April, 2005, WFMH received the first of three significant grants from the American Red Cross Liberty Disaster Relief Fund to support Feel the Music!. Other funding followed.

Feel the Music! workshops began in the fall of 2005 and since then has served hundreds of children, teens and families throughout the Tri-State area.

In 2006-7, WFMH expanded the successes of Feel the Music! to serve in public schools including PS 124 in Chinatown and the Millennium High School, as well as the hospital-based Sibs' Place.

In December, 2007, WFMH received its 501c3 status.

In 2009, WFMH became Feel the Music!.