Next Step Benefit - March 29th at MIT

So for the past three or four summers I've worked at camp/conferences for an organization called Next Step.  Next Step puts together programs for youth living with life threatening illnesses at absolutely no cost for the youth.  The oldest program they run is called One Love, which aims to helps empower, educate and encourage young people living with HIV to develop important life-skills and make healthy choices.  It has been nothing short of amazing making music with some extremely talented youth from this program, seeing the program grow, and watching the youth be empowered in sharing their story to the world (such as with a few years ago when a few youth from One Love made the front page of the New York Times).  And in the last couple years Next Step has also started similar camps for youth living with cancer and metabolic, mitochondrial, and rare genetic diseases, which I feel very fortunate to have been a part of as well.

(photograph courtesy of Jasmin Floyd)

On March 29th Next Step is hosting a benefit fundraiser in the Walker Memorial Building at MIT in Cambridge, MA.  I'll be playing in the house band for it (which is made up of all music therapists and we'll be playing some jamming classic pop tunes, as well as some current ones) and youth from these camp/conferences will also be performing.  It should be a pretty amazing celebration of all the great work that folks at Next Step are doing and should hopefully raise some serious funds to allow these ridiculously awesome programs to happen and to equip them with a rocking music therapy team.  It is pretty pricey (a $75 donation per ticket if you register before March 21st), but it's for as good of a cause as is out there and it's been a blast every year - so if you have the funds and are interested in coming here's a link with more info.  And every penny still counts, so if you want to help out but can't afford the price of the ticket, here's where you can donate.

Thanks!!!