Earlier this year Kindermusik International gave out five $1,000 grants as part of the Good Beginnings Grant Program. The grants could be used by the recipients in any way they saw fit as long as the purpose was to help children. Over the past 8-10 months, we’ve had the honor and pleasure of keeping in touch with the grant recipients to find out how things are progressing at their different organizations.
One such update came into our inboxes the other day and we wanted to share some of highlights from it. The grant recipient was Kim Stadler and her organization is A.R.T.S., Arts Refreshing the Soul. A.R.T.S. employs various creative art programs to promote emotional and spiritual healing for women and children who are recovering from domestic abuse, drug addiction, poverty, and homelessness. One of the programs Kim uses is our ABC Music & Me curriculum. While we didn’t require that any of the Good Beginnings grant money be spent with Kindermusik, we were excited and honored when Kim told us she would be using her grant to purchase ABC Music & Me for A.R.T.S.
Kim came to establish A.R.T.S. several years after her children were born. She’d left an assistant principal position to stay home with her kids and as they grew she saw how important art was to their development—they got music exposure in a local Kindermusik program and art exposure at preschool. Having previously been a music teacher, Kim knew the important role art can play in a child’s development, but seeing this first-hand with her own kids brought her understanding to a new level.
She was later exposed to a music program on the south side of Chicago which used music as a tool for helping the underserved in that community. She was instantly hooked and couldn’t get the kids out of her mind. She said, “I couldn’t pretend not to see how much they loved it, needed it, and wanted it, and yet it just wasn’t available to most kids in their situations.” With that, her traditional education career was over and she began the process of setting up a non-profit. The goal was to build a comprehensive arts program for the underserved children in her area.
Those of us at Kindermusik International were overjoyed when we learned that the first money Kim received for starting her non-profit was from the Good Beginnings grant. Last week she checked in and here are a few excerpts from her wonderful email:
“I just wanted to update you on the progress of my non-profit, A.R.T.S., and give you my report of how the Kindermusik Good Beginnings Grant has been used to bring about my idea of taking music and art classes to women and children in local shelters and social service agency situations.
I ended up with two different clients: WINGS (Women in Need Growing Stronger), a domestic violence safe house, and PHD (Society for the Preservation of Human Dignity), a pregnancy crisis center and family support organization dealing mostly with poverty among families with at least one child age 0-3. I am thrilled to be at these two places and I absolutely love the work and interaction I have with these women and children. It is amazing to watch the response to the ABC program and then work on art projects and get to talk and interact with these moms and children. They are sooo grateful and appreciative and excited to see me each week – it just motivates me all the more and strengthens my belief that this type of program is exactly what these children and families need, but simply can’t afford.
I am thrilled that Kindermusik is a huge part of what I am doing and makes it possible to provide these women and children with valuable enrichment, beauty, and healing for their lives.”
Kim’s story serves as a reminder to us that money isn’t what makes things happen, people make things happen. While we’re honored to play a tiny role by helping fund Kim’s vision, none of this amazing, touching work would be happening without her tireless effort. And for that, we deeply thank her, and all the rest of you out there who are touching lives, whether it be with a thousand dollars, a million dollars, or no dollars at all. You are the difference makers in this world.
Be sure to visit the website for Kim’s organization, A.R.T.S. at http://www.artsrefreshingthesoul.org. We look forward to continuing to keep in touch with Kim and the other Good Beginnings grant recipients.