Mike Ball, Lost Voices

CNN Heroes 2023

A musician and writer all his life, Mike Ball started Lost Voices in 2007 to help kids in juvenile detention centers and residential treatment facilities express themselves through songwriting. The organization’s trauma-informed care approach encourages participants to find the voice that allows them to begin to heal. Since its inception, Lost Voices’ weeklong emotionally intensive programs have helped more than 2,500 kids.

Read about Mike on CNN's website here.

Watch CNN Hero Mike Ball's video here.

------------------------------------------

As the founder of Lost Voices, I am deeply honored that I have been named a 2023 CNN Hero for my work. We started more than seventeen years ago as a small group of professional singer-songwriters with the idea that we could use songwriting to help teenage girls and boys who have experienced severe trauma due to abuse and neglect, including survivors of human trafficking. During that time we have touched the lives of more than 2,500 kids between six and eighteen years of age.

Our teams work with the kids using the techniques of Trauma Informed Care. Our team training programs and assessment protocol have been developed in partnership with the CASCAID program at the University of Michigan School of Nursing. Every interaction we have with the kids is guided by the understanding that the trauma these young people have endured has a profound effect on how they are able to interact with the world.

All the donations we receive go toward funding songwriting and performing workshops that create a safe expressive environment where therapeutic breakthroughs happen. This in turn plants seeds of hope and healing that can forever transform these tortured young lives. You can learn more about the Lost Voices process here. The cost of a full one-week session with the kids, culminating in an on-stage performance and a CD of their concert, is $10,000. You can see how vital the support of our donors is to continuing and expanding our work.

Thanks in advance for your contribution to Lost Voices, a program that means so much to the lives of so many young people. And please spread the word about Lost Voices by sharing this fundraiser.