UKC and TBUS

Today I got to meet with Jim, Central Florida guy for Ukulele Kids Club, and Tom, Prez of TBUS. Florida now has 13 hospitals in the program so far.
He or Corey will come to our first 2018 Directors meeting and present the program to the rest of the board. Tom said he is sure the rest of the board will light up about this.
Then begins the job of looking for volunteer ukers to go and adopt a kid in the hospitals (3 in our area) that have been given ukes. They will also work with the parents or advocates of the child, who will receive a loaner uke so that they can learn to play with our kids.
I'm pretty excited about this, we want to do it right, it's a program with tons of merit.
If anyone is already doing this, please respond with some info about what worked/didn't work.
Thanks!

Kudos to you Nickie for your work on this project.

I think it is wonderful how you are helping to make the world a better place.

Thank you.

It's great to see more and more support for The Ukulele Kids Club. About a year ago I donated $200 that the members of The CC Strummers pooled together, one of whom turned me onto The UKC. Corey immediately replied his thanks and asked to which hospital music therapy program we would like the ukes to go. Our leader, Cali Rose and I found out that UCLA/Mattel Children's Wing was starting a program shortly and as it happens, was being headed by a therapist with whom Corey had experience in Florida, Jenna Bollard.

Once we made all the arrangements, six members at a time from our group of about sixty visit the hospital about once a month, going from room to room lead by Jenna, playing for the kids and donating ukes at the same time. We've donated about forty ukes so far, keeping Jenna supplied regularly. We have to be self contained and cannot carry around anything that has to be set down, like music stands or amps, I play bass uke and have a small battery amp I wear over my shoulder.

Cali picked a variety of songs, ranging from lullabies for infants, to young children standards and even a couple contemporary for teens. And of course everyone wants to hear "Over the Rainbow" Iz's version. We discovered very quickly that we only had to learn one or two verses of each song rather than the entire song since we only have about an hour or so to get to about 10-15 children. That actually helped motivate more of our members to participate, relieving the concern that they would have to memorize lots of songs.

Members are also concerned that they will be overwhelmed by the ailing children, but at our following group meeting, the participants share their experiences, saying how gratifying it was, and how obvious it was that the children enjoyed it so much, especially receiving the ukes. To exemplify that, last week we played for a five year old and Jenna told us afterwards that it was the first time he smiled in the two weeks since he was admitted.

One of the other fun elements is when I carpool everyone to the hospital, Cali rehearses us, which she videos and uploads, calling it Carpool Karaoke. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CCIrAdWYifI

Thanks Mike and Booli, this is some information that I can take to the Directors meeting tomorrow!