Our founder was honored as a 2023 CNN Hero. Here he is making music with talented rapper J-Money, AKA Jerrell Moore. Jerrell was a teenager when he wrote this rap to express his feelings more than ten years ago in a Lost Voices program.
There is a wonderful charity in Michigan called Eagles for Children, and they have been helping Lost Voices change young lives for two years. Twenty of Michigan’s finest country clubs participate in a brilliant program in which club members donate a few dollars every time any member scores an eagle. For non-golfers, that involves scoring two strokes under par on a hole. In 2022 each eagle scored in one of the clubs raised, on average, $1,142. By the end of the year, the twenty clubs raised a total of $1,012,465! They gave Lost Voices a generous grant for this year that we used toward funding three programs with the girls at Vista Maria.
The first program was in April. We worked with a great group of young women who were specially cleared to be filmed. This is extremely rare with our population of kids, and was accomplished so that they could be included in a 2023 CNN Heroes segment partly filmed during a creative session and their final concert. They wrote a group song, titled The System, that deals with the frustrations of being in residential placement and in the foster care system in general. The lyrics are posted below. (more…)
A couple of weeks ago Lost Voices got the chance to work with a new population of kids. We took a team to the New Hope Center for Grief Support summer day camp, where we wrote a song with 130 kids who have lost a parent, sibling, or someone else close to them. They were divided by age into nine “teams.” The oldest child was fourteen, and the youngest was three. Each team wrote their own verse to the song with a common chorus. That means that the song is nine verses long, but it’s worth listening to every word these children came up with.
It was amazing for us to hear the sweetness and joy in their voices as they let their feelings out. I feel like that comes through well in the recording and the photos in this presentation that the New Hope folks put together. (more…)
In the summer of 2006, author and musician Mike Ball called up folk music legend Josh White, Jr. and invited him to help write songs with a dozen incarcerated teenage boys. Ball had been leading creative writing workshops with these troubled but talented young men, and he wanted to extend this powerful creative outlet to roots music. Armed with a grant from the Michigan Humanities Council, the two walked into the WJ Maxey Boys Training School with no plan other than to write some songs. (more…)
In 2021 the Lost Voices team went to work with a complete annual program of three sessions with the boys at the Methodist Children’s Home Society (MCHS) in Redford, Michigan. Since then, we have had the support of the Hardies Family Trust to fund our work there.
Our sessions at MCHS are wonderful. We have had an enthusiastic and engaged group of boys for each program, and the songs they come up with are fantastic. Our Lost Voices teams have included Josh White, Jr., Samantha Cooper, Matt Watroba, Reverend Robert Jones, Mattijane Epperson, Kitty Donohoe, and Lost Voices founder Mike Ball.
Several of the boys, inspired by the Lost Voices teams, are very interested in learning to play the guitar. For 2023 we were able to secure funding as part of the Hardies Family grant to pay for a teacher who will conduct weekly lessons with them. We even have guitars, donated by generous Lost Voices supporters, to support the cause. (more…)
This past year has been one of the most exciting ever for Lost Voices. During 2022 we accomplished three Lost Voices interventions at Methodist Children’s Home Society (MCHS) in Redford Township, two at Vista Maria in Dearborn Heights, and three at Wedgwood Christian Services in Grand Rapids. This means that our teams were in touch with more kids in a single year than ever before. (more…)
Last month trauma informed care expert Dr. Michelle Munro-Kramer and Lost Voices founder Mike Ball were honored to have the opportunity to be featured presenters at Mott Hospital’s 2022 Child Abuse and Neglect Conference. This virtual event brought together more than two hundred and fifty professionals, ranging from social workers to neurosurgeons to therapists, to discuss this incredibly important topic. We were able to talk to them for ninety minutes about how we do what we do and the science behind why it’s so important.
We obtained permission from the Conference organizers to show you the video of our entire presentation. The video will also give you an inside glimpse into the training our teams of musicians receive.
[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCfhUsCzX-A[/embedyt]
This is the time of year when all of us are counting our blessings and thinking about ways we can share our good fortune with people who are not quite as lucky as we have been. This is at least part of the reason that more than 30% of all donations to charitable causes come between Thanksgiving and Christmas.
Thanks to the generosity of our supporters, Lost Voices is finishing one of the best years we’ve ever had in terms of the children we were able to reach. We conducted six programs, including an amazing week of creativity and healing with the boys at the Methodist Children’s Home Society for the first time!
As we head into 2022, we’re hoping to nearly double that outreach. We have already secured grant or foundation support for several programs, but the vast majority of the dollars that make our work possible come from individual donations by folks like you. And as I said before, more than 30% of those dollars will come in during the next few weeks.
That’s why Lost Voices Board member Don Soenen has agreed to match every donation, dollar-for-dollar, that we receive between Giving Tuesday on November 30 and Sunday, January 2. This means that your gift during this holiday season will help twice as many boys and girls find hope and healing through the power of music! To make a matched donation, you can visit the Donation Page to make a donation on the Website, or go to our #Giving Tuesday and Holiday Fundraiser on Facebook. (more…)
Anyone familiar with Lost Voices knows how clever and deeply introspective the kids can be. I’ve been writing songs with them for a decade and a half, and I’m still constantly amazed at the quality and diversity of the lyrics they come up with. During the six programs we were able to do this year, we created original music with more than 50 girls and boys.
We got songs about resilience:
Like a phoenix we rise from the ashes
Growing stronger every time
Using the scars from the past to guide us
We look for a brighter future. (more…)
As much as Lost Voices has grown to reach new populations of youth over the past 15 years, there are still a whole lot of kids out there that we’ve never been able to help. That’s why it is so exciting to build a new partnership, like we have this year with the Methodist Children’s Home Society, or MCHS. With an initial program funded by a generous donation from Lost Voice supporters George and John Shea, we were able to work with the boys in this wonderful facility for the first time.
Carolyn Watson, the Chief Advancement Officer at MCHS had good things to say about our time with the boys:
MCHS is grateful for the time and energy Lost Voices spent with our children. The creative outlet our youth received from the program is immeasurable and an experience that will stay with them for life. Thank you to Lost Voices and the amazing musicians who took the time to make a difference in the lives of our children!
Speaking for the whole Lost Voices team, I’ll say that we are just as grateful to be working with MCHS and the young men in their care. (more…)
