Ring Our Dreams to Life!

Like many young adults, Lauren and Josh dream of meaningful lives, in spite of the communication-related challenges of autism!










Lauren and Josh were special education classmates in elementary school.  

When they left the school system about 10 years ago, they joined an estimated 776,000 Floridians with disabilities who are often left at home, unemployed with few meaningful activities.  As their moms, we are passionate about finding and creating meaningful activities that will improve our adult children's social and communication skills so they can participate in the community, even when we're no longer around.   

That’s why we are so excited to launch the Ring Our Dreams to Life campaign to start a special needs handbell choir! 

This approach led by dedicated music therapists and music teachers nationally and worldwide has successfully taught adults at various ability levels for decades.   Since the 1950s, music and music therapy have proven useful in treating people on the autism spectrum, improving learning and communication in a structured environment that encourages more social interaction.

Special needs handbell choirs use a variety of methods from sheet music to sign language and special charts to teach people with different learning styles to play music, yet they are part of the larger community of handbell choirs based at schools and churches.  Participants in our Exceptional Ensembell (“ringers”) will learn to communicate, interact with others and perform music.  When the group performs, they will enrich the lives of community members by sharing their joyous personalities and hidden talents! We are fortunate to be mentored by a choir based in Pennsylvania for 40 years, giving us hands-on guidance on everything from start-up staff to supplies and ongoing operations.  

Our goal was to raise $20,000 by June 1, 2018.  We have reached 21% of this goal and still need to raise enough to support a qualified, passionate consulting director, so we are continuing to seek donations. We also are creating a registration list for up to 13 participants who wish to begin practicing by July.  

A local recreation department has agreed to host classes/rehearsals two times a week and store the equipment.  Several music therapists and music educators are eager to participate, but they have other clients, so we must achieve our campaign goal to compensate them for their time. In Year One, we intend to start with handchimes and attract enough support to buy handbells and expand the number of participants.

The person we hire will have experience teaching music and will share our passion for including people with intellectual challenges in the community.   This "Exceptional Ensembell" is a crucial first step toward a musical model that can help our family members and others with similar challenges participate more fully in the greater community.

Won't you help us Ring Our Dreams to Life?



Thank you so much for your generous support!

Vicki Silver and Donna Maheady