Virginia

Music and the arts have the power to heal.  Music and the arts have the power to bring people together.  Music and the arts have the power to provide comfort, companionship, and a sense of belonging.

Today I had the extraordinary pleasure of visiting the Tidewater Arts Outreach (TAO) organization in Norfolk, VA.  TAO truly believes in the many powers of music and the arts, and is committed to bringing those to various places in their community such as dependent care facilities and youth shelters.

As I learned about all of the different approaches TAO takes towards completing their mission, I was so impressed by how much their amazing staff and volunteers are able to do while based out of a couple of small rooms in an office suite.  TAO is all about taking music and the arts to the people and places who need them the most.  Take a look at their Web site and you'll be awed by the amount of artists, programs, and people they are able to leverage, place and reach (and please read more about their wonderful mission because it is something that affects us all in some way or another).

For TAO, I was happy to deliver two acoustic guitars that will find good use in a youth shelter.  One of the programs TAO supports is working with kids who ordinarily may not get second chances (for a variety of reasons).  They have found that by simply engaging these kids and showing them that someone cares about what they do, they can make a really positive change in these kids' lives.  For me that was a strong message of hope, and using music as an instrument to bring that change is all the more rewarding.  I think people (myself once included) often tend to think of music as something that is limited to those that have studied it and have been trained for years in it.  Listening today to how TAO uses music to reach these kids and hearing how the kids respond to it, I can assure you that music really is the universal language.