Youth Helping Youth Coffeehouse Gig at Newbreak Cafe
On May 21st we had one of our Youth Helping Youth coffeehouse events benefiting MTCCA’s nonprofit – Banding Together at Newbreak Coffee and Café in Ocean Beach. It was an amazing event filled with multiple performances from clients, staff, and jam session crew.
Banding Together provides scholarships for individual music therapy sessions as well as Jam Sessions for teens and adults throughout the year. Jam Sessions give participants the opportunity to take an active role in creating and playing music in a group setting. This allows for them to work on social, psychosocial, and executive functioning skills. Each participant receives a volunteer mentor who encourages him or her to get involved in the musical experience. Over this past Jam Session season (Jan-May 2017) I was able to mentor a number of participants and observe astounding growth and development of various social skills in the jam session crewmembers. Not to mention that each of these sessions are provided at no cost to the participants or their families!
At the Youth Helping Youth event, a number of our Jam Session participants performed some songs we sing at Jam Sessions. The Kingsmen, a band consisting of 5 of MTCCA’s longtime clients, performed a set of songs. The Kingsmen have been together for seven years and have performed with acts like The English Beat at the Belly Up and Willie Nelson’s son, Lucas. Their hard work paid off and they sounded great! Guest artist, Hannah Quinn also performed and did an amazing job singing and playing piano covering some of todays pop hits.
To finish off the afternoon, a few prizes from generous sponsors were raffled off with proceeds from the tickets going to Banding Together. Jam session crewmembers and members of the Kingsmen got to pull the tickets and read the winning numbers. It was truly an afternoon to remember.
Check out Banding Together’s Facebook page here where you can see videos from this event and many others: https://www.facebook.com/bandingtogethersd/
There is one more Youth Helping Youth Coffeehouse Fundraiser on June 4th from 2-4pm at Brew Coffee Spot in El Cajon. Hope to see you there!
Here’s one of the videos from Facebook:
Shannon Flaherty
