As another season comes to an end, we want to express our gratitude to all the artists, collaborators, sponsors, donors, as well as the beneficiaries and the staff of the organizations we worked with.
We have cherished many memorable moments throughout this year’s activities from September to June. While we cannot share all of them, we’d like to close this season with a testimonial from the “Musical Embrace” program conducted in the NICU (Neonatal Intensive Care Unit of the General Children’s Hospital of Athens “Panagiotis & Aglaia Kyriakou”) by music therapist Christina Kalliodi from “Angels of Joy”:
“In the NICU, many of the babies have difficulty coordinating movements necessary for breastfeeding, often getting tired quickly and stopping. However, developing this skill is crucial for their discharge from the unit. The music-therapeutic technique of rhythmic entrainment, where the music therapist uses the initial rhythm of the baby’s mouth movements to create a rhythmic repetitive sound, has been particularly helpful. It activates the baby and leads to the coordination of their movements with the sound stimulus.
We recently applied this technique to one of the babies in the NICU. When the mother saw how effective it was, a doctor present during the procedure commented, ‘If we told you this works without you having seen it, would you have believed it?’ Never, are you kidding ?!”
*For this season (September 2023 to June 2024), our Music Therapy programs are supported by an SNF - Release Athens grant, made by the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) as part of its Global Health Initiative (GHI).
