Ranjana Srinivasan-Friday August 19th 2011

As it has been said many times before, all good things must come to an end. Today we had the kids perform in a final concert, and it was a truly amazing experience. During the day we had a dress rehearsal and after the camp at twelve we had all the parents come in to watch the kids show off their many talents. We had each group perform a number. They also entered the concert singing our theme song “Beat The Heat” to the tune of “Stir It Up.” Following this the group as a whole performed a movement song called “ I’m So Excited” which was written by our own Channing Shippen. After this the first group, the yellow team, performed. Over the week they created their own band called “J.J. and the pink berets” and today they sang the song “La Bamba.” The next group, the red group, was our toughest one this week. They performed a song called “ Play The Drum” and each had a drum solo. This went surprisingly well and we were all so proud of them!  The last group that performed was the blue team. They played song “ Hound Dog” on the drums and did an amazing job. After this a little drum team and dance team performed routines. To end the concert Team Cayman performed a song that we wrote together called “The Beat Of My Heart” and dedicated it to the kids. Many parents in the audience were very touched by our performance and almost all of us were in tears. I saw one of the mothers in the audience shedding some tears and I immediately started to as well. I think this whole process was very emotional because we all worked hard to raise the money and make sure this camp happened, and after it was all done we finally got to be proud of our hard work. What also made it an emotional process was the fact that these children will special needs in the Cayman Islands are treated poorly on a regular basis. Instead of learning about their needs, many parents are embarrassed by their children and discipline them by hitting them and hiding them from the community. It broke our hearts to find this out and we were so glad that our camp gave them a chance to express themselves in a positive way through music. We really tried to explain to each parent the progress their child has made and how proud we are of them. The parents seemed very grateful that their children were able to come. Many kids became very upset when they realized it was the last day. It was sad to see but now we know that this camp has made a difference in their lives. For many kids they became passionate about certain instruments such as the guitar and the drums, and now their parents are working to enroll them in music lessons. Our goal coming to Grand Cayman was to promote music therapy and show how it positively effects children with special needs. I believe that we accomplished this and I am very proud to be apart of such an amazing team. I will end this blog by quoting Mariza in saying, “ If we can put on a concert with the kids in one week, imagine what we could do in a year.”